Final Four in Dallas

I am a bit behind in my posting so I'll catch up today.  Two weeks ago we had the opportunity to attend the NCAA Final Four games in Dallas courtesy of Northwestern Mutual.  They are an NCAA sponsor and as a result tickets were available for us to attend.  To add to the excitement the Badgers had made it through to the Final Four so we had the opportunity to see the play.  So we packed up our Wisconsin red sweatshirts and headed to Dallas - for some hopefully warmer weather (which was not to be, Dallas was a overcast and on the cool side with intermittent rain).

The finals were held at the AT&T stadium where the Dallas Cowboys play.  Yes,. the NCAA Final Four has become so popular that a normal basketball arena is no longer sufficient so they play it in a football stadium with added seats to fill in the field.  If you have never been to the AT&T stadium I would recommend a visit if you are ever in Dallas.  It is the largest indoor stadium I have ever seen.  The video screen alone is worth the visit.  It has incredible clarity for a screen that large and, as we found out, it is actually larger than the basketball court! 

Since Northwestern Mutual is a sponsor we were able to attend many of the weekend's events that mostly had to do with eating, drinking, and chatting with people.  But we did enjoy a concert by the Eagles and Dirk Bentley.  Along with that we had the opportunity to see the various trophies (coaches and teams),get a back of the scenes tour of the AT&T stadium, and to shoot some hoops on the actual basketball court.  Personally, I don't see how the players do it - with the court in a massive arena made it hard to judge where the basket was and that was without someone's hand in my face and 80,000 people yelling at me.  You can get an idea of the inside of the stadium and the noise from the video posted below and this is before the game actually started an people starting cheering.

We were fortunate to have seats about 7 rows up from the floor for the Wisconsin game but our cheering was sufficient to help them pull out a win.  Although, it was a great game going down to a shot in the final seconds deciding the outcome.  We went home Saturday night exhausted from the days festivities as well as the emotional letdown of the loss.

The final game was thrilling as we got to cheer for the CT Huskies which we followed for the time we were in CT.  One of the other key highlights for our time in Dallas was finding a Krispy Kreme doughnut store and enjoying a vanilla cream stuffed one morning.  We also toured the George W Bush museum/library which was an interesting stop especially the section on the Sept 2001 bombings. 

Then all too soon, it was home for me while Jo continued on to Miami for a conference.