Kansas-North Carolina NCAA title game is awful for those fans inside the Superdome

With its ever-present aroma of those rum-laden Hurricanes, and the soundtrack of drunks falling down over their shoelaces, nothing will ever strip New Orleans’ championship belt as America’s best city to host a championship game.

Hurricane Katrina couldn’t even knock New Orleans out of the rotation of hosting Super Bowls, college football national championships, and NCAA Final Fours.

Please note, there is no city in America worse for families with young children. Shoutout to the moms and dads brave (drunk?) enough to bring their kids to the French Quarter and navigate the sights and sounds that are typically NC-17.

There is no parenting MasterClass on how to explain to your young ones why that man is “sick” on the corner of Bourbon and Canal, or why that woman is determined to take off her shirt in the middle of a crowded street in exchange for a string of beads. ”One Shining Moment” episodes, these are not.

Kansas, North Carolina, Duke and Villanova all came to New Orleans, planning to win the 2022 NCAA national championship. Regardless of the outcomes here, you reach a Final Four, you’ve won something even if your season ends in a loss.

The only real losers in a Final Four played in New Orleans are most of the fans who paid to witness the games inside the Superdome.

Should a Final Four be on your sports bucket list or if, say, your Jayhawks make the title game and you are motivated to make the 525-mile drive from Cowtown to the Crescent City, some advice — buy a great seat or go to a sports bar to watch it on television.

There is no worse buy in sports than the basketball game played in a football dome where the court is placed in the middle of the venue and all of the action essentially occurs between what would be the 35-yard lines of the field.

On Saturday night inside the Superdome, maybe 15,000 were close enough to actually see the games without having to strain their eyes, or needing a pair of binoculars.

With crowds at sporting events slowly shrinking, this is a lazy shrimp boat moving against that tide, but right now you need one of the best seats in the house to enjoy watching a Final Four game here.

An average seat is still a terrible seat, and the cheap seats are trash.

More than 70,000 fans were expected to be on hand to watch Kansas and North Carolina play for the national title Monday night inside the Superdome.

That’s a healthy cut above the 61,000 fans who were on hand 40 years ago when Michael Jordan and North Carolina defeated Georgetown in the 1982 championship.

That game, more than any other, was the birth of this awful idea that needs to die. Basketball games don’t belong in domes.

Even if you are close, you still feel like you are 15 miles from the game.

The NBA All-Star game at AT&T Stadium in 2010 featured a record crowd of 108,713. For most of those in attendance, the game was so far away it was a rumor.

The sounds of the crowd, and the game, get lost in these cavernous structures.

Basketball, unlike football or even soccer, is built around intimacy, the notion of being close to the game. Even with a bad seat inside a 20,000-seat venue, you still feel close and like you’re part of the scene.

The sensations and sounds associated with a basketball game are impossible to achieve in a place as big as AT&T Stadium, the Superdome or any stadium that is home to a football team.

The last time the Final Four was played in a small, traditional basketball arena was 1996, at the Meadowlands in New Jersey.

But as long as the NCAA can sell out a Superdome, it’s not going to change any plans. It would require a dramatic downturn in attendance for the NCAA to move away from this model.

Could happen, but likely won’t be anytime soon.

The NCAA knows fans want to be at the party, even if it means they can barely hear, or see, the game.

The Final Four is still one of the best events on the sports calendar, and not even the NCAA can screw that up. (We think.)

New Orleans, aka Disneyland for Drunks, remains the best city in America to watch a championship game.

Just know if you don’t have a great seat to watch the Final Four at the Superdome, settle for the party on Bourbon Street.

(And don’t bring your kids.)