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MEAC tourney coming in '09
Joel Coliseum to be host for three years
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Published: May 28, 2008
The Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference has been hopping from city to city, trying to make its basketball tournaments a success. It hopes that the next stop, Winston-Salem, will be the right one.
MEAC officials awarded the conference's men's and women's basketball tournaments to Winston-Salem and Joel Coliseum yesterday for the next three years. The contract will begin with the 2008-09 tournament scheduled for March 10-15. All men's and women's games will be played at Joel Coliseum.
Commissioner Dennis Thomas of the MEAC praised Winston-Salem for having all the ingredients to help the tournament grow.
"Every time we voted or talked about where this tournament was going, it always came up Winston-Salem," Thomas said.
Winston-Salem beat out Raleigh, where the tournament was held the last three years, as well as Norfolk, Va., according to sources. Thomas would not reveal the cities that Winston-Salem beat out. The proposal that the city put together to lure the tournament included a $100,000 package with $25,000 coming from Winston-Salem State, one of the newest members of the conference. The rest came from the city and the county -- $25,000 from the Forsyth County Tourism Development Authority, $25,000 from the Millennium Fund and $25,000 from the city.
WSSU's role in helping to land the MEAC Tournament was slightly different than it was in 1993 when the city landed the CIAA Tournament for six years. WSSU didn't have to help with the financing of that proposal. The CIAA stayed for six years, from 1994 to 1999.
Thomas said that he would like to boost tournament attendance figures to 50,000 by the third year of the contract. In March at the RBC Center in Raleigh, the attendance for the week was 38,228.
Thomas said that since 2005, when just 15,000 fans attended the tournament in Richmond, Va., attendance has been on the rise. He hopes that trend will continue now that the tournament will be held in a city with an MEAC school. There isn't a MEAC school in Raleigh or in Richmond.
However, WSSU is still in transition to Division I and full membership in the MEAC and won't be eligible for next year's tournament.
"I think it's a buy-in of the city," Thomas said. "You need a progressive city with great and strong leadership that can do those things to move the tournament forward. We think with an anchor university like Winston-Salem State, which is a tremendous university, I'm comfortable with where this tournament is going."
Thomas said that in an effort to boost attendance for the championship games on March 15, WSSU and N.C. Central, which hopes to join the MEAC, will play in a "bonus" game as they did this past March. That bonus game was well-received in Raleigh.
N.C. Central, which left the CIAA and is also in transition to Division I, hasn't been accepted into the MEAC. The conference has a moratorium on expansion that was not lifted at last week's spring meetings, meaning that N.C. Central is still in limbo. Thomas wouldn't say when the moratorium will be lifted.
Thomas has high hopes for attendance here.
"We think in a three-year period we can increase our attendance to that 50,000 paid attendance," Thomas said. "Now, if after the 2009 tournament, and we have 35,000, then I have to pause for concern. But we don't forecast that."
The tournament will be competing for fans with the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament in Greensboro. Mayor Allen Joines of Winston-Salem said that landing a tournament such as the MEAC, whose winners in the women's and men's tournaments get automatic bids to the NCAA Tournament, is a big thing.
"I think it's a tremendous honor for Winston-Salem," Joines said. "As I told the commissioner, their tournament is growing and that we can help him grow the tournament to the level he would like to see it."
Bob McCoy, the president of the Forsyth County TDA, compared yesterday's news to the CIAA Tournament's coming to Winston-Salem in 1994.
"We were instrumental in growing the CIAA years ago…," McCoy said. "It grew so well it went right out of town to a bigger city, but that's all right.
"We plan to put as much effort and passion in marketing the MEAC and into helping it grow to be the best that it can be."
Thomas said that for the tournament to grow, the city will have to do its part.
"We are going to have to do some very great marketing and promoting, something we feel the city has the expertise to do," he said.
John Dell can be reached at jdell@wsjournal.com.
Numbers game
Recent MEAC Tournament attendance figures
2005
Richmond 15,015
2006
Raleigh 22,508
2007
Raleigh 30,452
2008
Raleigh 38,228
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