Originally Posted by xubrew
There was another one. The Horizon League was the co-host.
I find the following to be ironic. I can actually name the locations and the hosts in any given year, yet I find the only real benefit to hosting is to satisfy a school's or AD's sense of Gatsby-ism. And, well, look what happened to him. I also know what all goes into hosting an event.
Yet everyone else who talks about how great it is to host these events because of the publicity that comes along with it probably can't even name half the locations or even two or three of the hosts.
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But as has been pointed out, it isn't just the publicity (and Dayton DOES benefit from that perhaps more than most), it's the revenue generated within the local economy. Dayton wrote the book on hosting. They. Literally. Wrote. The. Book. Which the NCAA distributes to other host sites. If there were no value in hosting (beyond ego, as you suggest), no one would bid for the rights to do so.
Oh, and my guess is those hotels, bars and restaurants are a little more packed on a Tuesday and Wednesday night in Dayton than they would be otherwise. Probably on Thursdays, too, elsewhere. Maybe Forbes' reporting is shoddy? No, I don't think so.