The phrase "March Madness" is entirely accurate to describe the amount of attention people devote annually to college basketball players this month. There's the 24-hour news coverage, countless celebrity predictions and the fact that almost every office in the nation has an illegal betting pool.
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The phrase "March Madness" is entirely accurate to describe the amount of attention people devote annually to college basketball players this month. There's the 24-hour news coverage, countless celebrity predictions and the fact that almost every office in the nation has an illegal betting pool.
So it's no wonder that people would get excited to see, touch and have a picture taken with a piece of (replica) Final Four flooring. The folks at Connor Sport Court International (Salt Lake City, Utah) know that, and since 2009 the company has taken the sports flooring to be used at the Final Four on a tour to show it off and help build tournament excitement.
This year, the tour made stops in Louisville, Ky.; Auburn, Ala.; Hattiesburg, Miss.; and Baton Rouge, La., hitting college campuses and providing a sports-related respite for students. Along the way, Connor posted a plethora of updates and photos on its Facebook page. During each tour stop, fans could pose with pictures of replica Final Four flooring, play pick-up games on a Connor Sport Court, and answer trivia questions for giveaways.
"People want to be part of the tour and part of the Final Four," said Jeff Morton, Connor's Director of Marketing. "We take the court on tour every year, and it's gotten bigger and bigger every year."
The final destination for the tour was New Orleans, host to this year's Final Four.
"We thought to ourselves, 'What's New Orleans famous for?' So we threw a parade to welcome the court to town, because it really is the unofficial kickoff to the Final Four," Morton says. "Once the court is in, the buzz really starts going. We had a band, we had people dressed in costumes, we were throwing out beads-it was a ton of fun."
The parade traveled more than a mile in downtown New Orleans, down Poydras Street, and ended at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
For Connor, however, the fun is really just beginning. On Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern, CBS Sports Network will air a documentary on the making of this year's Final Four floor, which will first see action on Saturday when Kentucky plays Louisville and Ohio State plays Kansas. The documentary will follow the creation of the floor from forest to tip-off.
To get you into the Final Four spirit, here's a preview of the documentary, which is sponsored by UPS:
