Today, most BYU fans experience the NCAA Tournament from a screen. But decades ago, March Madness actually came to Provo.
The Marriott Center hosted NCAA Tournament games four times — in 1972, 1977, 1979 and 1982 — bringing national media, powerhouse teams and future NBA talent to Provo.
For longtime BYU athletics staff members Ralph Zobell and Val Hale, those tournament years remain some of the most memorable moments of their time working in the Marriott Center.
Hale, who later served as BYU’s athletic director from 1999 to 2004, first experienced the NCAA Tournament as a sports information intern at BYU in 1980.
Hale said his job mostly involved helping media members and assisting the sports information staff during tournament weekends.
“I became an intern in the sports information office in 1980,” Hale said. “So I was probably involved in one or two of those regionals. My involvement was mainly working with the media, helping out in the press room, just running errands for (BYU SID) Dave Schulthess.”
Hosting the NCAA Tournament in Provo often became a statewide effort, with athletic departments across Utah helping make the event run smoothly.
“When BYU hosted, Utah staff and other sports information directors from the state would come and help us,” Hale said. “When they hosted, we would go help them. It was a big deal.”
Zobell, who began working in BYU athletics in 1976 and spent 41 years with the department, said the scale of the tournament operation was much bigger than most fans realized.
The 1979 regional alone brought a huge national media presence to Provo.
“When we hosted in 1979, we hosted 46 writers, 11 radio stations, 16 photographers, 17 sports information directors and seven TV broadcast teams,” Zobell said.
For a few years, some of the biggest names in college basketball came through the Marriott Center.
Zobell recalled teams led by coaches like Jerry Tarkanian of UNLV, Ray Meyer of DePaul and John Thompson of Georgetown.
Among the players who came through Provo during that stretch was a Georgetown center who would later become an NBA star.
“They had Patrick Ewing, a seven-footer,” Zobell said.
One memorable moment from the 1979 tournament still stands out to Zobell.
During the halftime show of the UCLA–DePaul game, Zobell recalled that UCLA players began warming up while the performance was still in progress.
“I believe it was the BYU folk dancers that were doing a halftime show,” Zobell said. “UCLA's coach was angry at his team and he sent them out early to start shooting. And so these players go and start shooting in the middle of the folk dancers."
The moment immediately turned the crowd against UCLA.
“All of a sudden, the crowd started booing. I thought it was really poor sportsmanship for them to do that,” Zobell said. “When DePaul came out of their locker room, massive cheers. DePaul didn’t know what they had done, but the crowd was behind them.”
DePaul rode the crowd’s energy and went on to win the game.
The energy inside the Marriott Center was another reason the games were memorable.
Hale said BYU’s student section helped make the Marriott Center one of the loudest places to play.
“The student section has always been awesome,” Hale said. “I hear people talking about how great the ROC is today, and they are amazing. But the student section was pretty awesome back in the '70s.”
At the time, students made up nearly half of the Marriott Center crowd.
“The students got 10,000 tickets in the Marriott Center out of 22,000,” Hale said. “The students sold out every game and it was pretty raucous. The student section has always been raucous.”
As exciting as it was, hosting the tournament in Provo also created some challenges.
Hale said the Marriott Center was a great place to watch basketball but wasn’t designed for an event as big as the NCAA Tournament.
“You know, the Marriott Center is a great arena,” Hale said. “It’s not a great arena for hosting events. We didn't really have a lot of space in the arena or outside the arena for the media work area.”
Another challenge was the limited number of places to stay in Provo.
“One of the problems was that Provo and Orem, especially back then, didn't have many full-service hotels," Hale said. "We hosted the tournament a few times, and I think did a nice job, but we were constrained because of that."
Zobell said BYU sometimes had to reserve motel rooms in nearby towns to accommodate the media.
“Part of our job was we would block out motel rooms even down in Springville,” Zobell said.
Eventually, new NCAA rules made it difficult for the tournament to return to Provo.
“They made a rule that in order to host the tournament, you had to have so many motels within like a 20-mile radius of your facility,” Zobell said.
Even with those challenges, Hale said many visiting players loved playing in the Marriott Center.
Part of what made the Marriott Center unique at the time was its suspended basketball floor. Hale said one player who especially appreciated it was UCLA center Bill Walton.
“He told me, 'If I could have played on the Marriott Center floor my whole career, I would have played 10 more years,’” Hale said. “The players loved that floor because it was springy. It was easier on their legs, and they felt like they could jump higher.”
Hale said visiting teams were often impressed with being in Utah itself.
“The players coming in for the tournaments loved it, and Provo is such a beautiful place,” Hale said. “It was always great to have people from outside the area come in here for the first time and see Provo in the springtime and the snow on the mountains. Those were fun days.”
Today, the NCAA Tournament no longer comes to the Marriott Center. But for a brief stretch in the late 1970s and early 1980s, March Madness had a home in Provo.