Butler received so many visits to its main Web site, school officials had to beef up the computer system. School President
Bobby Fong is commissioning a study to gauge the value of the publicity earned through the Bulldogs' run to the Final
Four.
It was the third runner-up finish for the city in the past six months. The Indiana Fever lost in the WNBA finals, the Indianapolis
Colts lost the Super Bowl and now Butler.
National ticket search engine says about 4,500 remained Monday morning for the NCAA championship game at Lucas Oil Stadium.
Butler is winning the war of merchandise sales, leading the other three
schools in the Final Four. A victory tonight, sports marketers said, would increase those sales fivefold.
As is the case at Duke, Butler graduates about 90 percent of its players. As is the case at Duke, there’s more than mere lip
service paid to the classroom at Butler.
Indiana and Purdue may be the state's traditional basketball powerhouses, but it's little Butler—enrollment 4,200—that's big time now. Butler is writing a Hollywood hoops script, a sequel to "Hoosiers."
Butler University is bracing for a siege of publicity this weekend. The school's Web sites have been bolstered and retail
shelves are being stocked. Already more than $1.7 million in Butler merchandise has been sold.
The NCAA and city put together a deal to cover insurance and liability issues for this year’s Final Four, but are still finalizing
an agreement that assures the event comes back regularly through 2039.
A debate rages over how Butler's spot in the Final Four will blunt the event's economic impact. But predicting the Final Four's true impact is fraught with unknowns.
The NCAA appears to be on the verge of expanding the men’s basketball tournament to 96 teams.
Butler University basketball coach Brad Stevens has an annual base pay of $350,000 with another $37,851 in benefits and deferred
compensation. Not bad for a 33-year-old. But it’s no comparison to what big-time men’s college basketball coaches make.
Itâ??s all about the whole, not the parts. They cut and move, move, move on offense. They defend like their scholarships depend on it.
Mediocrity in the athletic department was tolerated by the administration, winning wasn’t a priority and Tony Hinkle’s
five principles—humility, passion, unity, servanthood and thankfulness—had not been adopted as “The Butler
Way.”
Butler's run to the Final Four has its roots in a decision two decades removed by a former school president and a group
of trusting trustees who dared to believe the impossible was possible for the Bulldogs.
Money proving to be a powerful motivator in earning Big Ten's support of NCAA tournament expansion plan.
Ticket brokers say a flood of tickets became available on the secondary market following losses by the No. 1-seeded Kansas
Jayhawks and Kentucky Wildcats.
The pendulum of support is swinging and the idea of expanding the men's NCAA basketball tournament from 65 to 96 teams
is now gaining support from the Big Ten.
The NCAA said IUPUI allowed erroneous eligibility certification for 97 student-athletes from 2003-04 through 2006-07, demonstrating
a lack of institutional control and a failure to monitor by the university.
A proposal to launch a college auto racing series could be the answer to boosting open-wheel racing popularity to the level
it enjoyed when the first Final Four visited Indy in 1980.
The biggest chance Brad Stevens ever took, the best game plan he ever drew up, had nothing to do with a prized recruit or
some brilliant set of Xs and Os scrawled out on a greaseboard. It came on the day he decided to quit his job at Eli Lilly
and
Co. and to pursue his first love, basketball.
