NCAA Opens Shrine to College Athletics

The video greeting visitors Thursday at the NCAA Hall of Champions said it all: “Look Up To Champions.”

The treads of a basketball shoe give way to an underwater shot of swimmers and the frantic scramble for a hockey puck, seen from beneath the ice. The video, filmed through a Plexiglas floor, is projected downward at viewers on an 8-by-8-foot overhead screen.

It’s a different view of college sports, just what designers of the NCAA’s new shrine were hoping for.

NCAA president Cedric Dempsey said at the hall’s ribbon-cutting Thursday that it’s not intended to be a museum or hall of fame, but a celebration of champions. He hopes visitors will be touched by the emotional power of college competition.

“We wanted to celebrate what we’re all about, and that’s the student athlete,” Dempsey said during a ceremony attended by about 1,000 people, many in town to attend the men’s basketball Final Four tournament beginning Saturday.

The $10 million, 25,000-square-foot building, adjacent to NCAA headquarters in downtown Indianapolis, celebrates the history and pageantry of amateur athletics. Designers wanted it to do more than showcase team jerseys and old photographs.

Instead, they present a high-tech tour of collegiate sports, complete with interactive kiosks and multimedia presentations.

The hall is expected to attract more than 200,000 visitors a year. It was previously located in the basement of the NCAA’s Overland Park, Kan., home.

“I went to the last one, and this is a lot bigger and a lot more fun,” said Brian Francis, 14, of Stockton, Calif., who was in town for the Final Four. “It’s more colorful.”

The building’s design is reminiscent of a sports arena. The front doors open to a spacious great hall with a 50-foot ceiling, where banners celebrating the 1999 collegiate sports champions hang. Inside is a replica of a 1930s-era gymnasium.

The NCAA’s mission to regulate college competition quickly becomes evident.

A 1,700-pound bronze sculpture just inside the entrance depicts five football players in a “flying wedge” formation, a popular play during the early 1900s. The formation--where teammates protect the ball carrier by locking arms--was blamed for several serious injuries and deaths, prompting some schools to ban the sport.

When colleges agreed to outlaw the wedge, it was the first step toward establishing the rule-making body that later became the NCAA.

“One human life is too big a price for all the games of a season,” said James Day, chancellor of Syracuse in 1905, in a quote displayed next to the staircase.

The hall’s second floor features a wraparound video wall of 144 monitors showing various NCAA championships. A Final Four theater shows a narrated film of the 1999 championships, to be replaced soon with footage of the 2000 tourney that will be played in the nearby RCA Dome.

Displays covering all 22 NCAA-regulated sports, many of them with interactive kiosks and computer-touch screens, invite visitors to call up statistics and expand their knowledge of the games.