This year's Final Four basketball floor made by Connor Sport Court International (Salt Lake City, Utah) has received a deluge of coverage, eclipsing the amount of media attention devoted to most b-list celebrities.
The media blitz included the parade Connor threw on Friday, March 23, to usher the court to the New Orleans' Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Viewers and participants were surprised to be involved in a parade for a wood floor: "No, I've never been in a parade with a 53 foot tractor trailer, no sir," Bill Wolske, who piloted the floor down Poydras Street, told WWLTV. And after she was told she was standing in line to see a parade for a wood floor, Nikki Gripe, who lives in Stillwater, Okla., told WWLTV, "See we didn't even know, we just knew there was a parade." Here's a YouTube clip of coverage by New Orleans' WWL and Fox8:
Many other local media outlets covered the parade, and around the country, several outlets covered the multi-stop tour that preceded it. On Tuesday, HF provided a wrap up of the tour and parade.There was also major buzz about the floor's construction. On Sunday, CBS Sports Network devoted a one-hour documentary to the floor's making, and a few days prior to that, USA Today produced a short video on the floor's journey from the Menominee Indian Tribal Forest near Neopit, Wis., to a Connor production facility in Amasa, Mich., to the facility for Ohio Floor Company in Holmesville, Ohio, where it was sanded, painted and finished. Here's that clip:
So will the fame of this 2012's Final Four floor ever be eclipsed? Most likely. As we all know, March Madness comes every year and with it, even more buzz and even flashier painted maple floors.
