Why the Final Four court is elevated

The court at the Final Four isn’t on the ground. You might notice during this weekend’s games in San Antonio — or Final Four games in any other recent year — that there are bunches of people crowded around the court who sit below the playing surface.

Why is the court elevated?

Final Fours don’t happen in regular, ol’ basketball arenas. They’re played in football stadiums, which are much bigger. A football field is 120 yards long, and stadiums’ typical seating arrangements are designed to work for a 120-yard field. A college basketball court is 94 feet long, or about 31 yards. If the NCAA decided to just leave the stadium’s seating as it normally is, we’d be left looking at a tiny speck of a court in the middle of a massive field. There’d be lots of wasted space between the court and the first row of the stands.

Of course, you could put on a basketball game on a football field without elevating the court. But raising the court off the ground improves sight lines. Players on the benches and members of the media sitting at the scorer’s table could get in the way of some people’s views, and having everyone below the court makes it easier for others to see.

The floor is usually about waist-high for a person standing at field level. A floor technician who’s worked on these courts before says player safety is also a consideration.

It’s impossible to say definitively if the courts actually help players stay safe. In theory, it limits people at court level, which provides fewer things for players to run into.

But when Louisville’s Kevin Ware suffered a gruesome leg injury on an elevated court in the 2013 NCAA tournament, it sure looked like he was trying to stop himself from falling out of bounds (and over the edge of the court) as he came down after jumping to close out against a three-pointer.

A link between the elevated court and Ware’s injury has never been proven, but it’s not hard to imagine how making players run and jump at full speed on a court that’s well off the ground could be dangerous.

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