Post-NCAA Mailbag: Athens vs. Orlando, Broadcast (Part 2)

Let's get into your questions about host site.

So the first question is about home court advantage.

"How do you overcome the huge advantage of playing at home for the whole tournament?" So I...

It was interesting to me to hear A&M head coach Mark Weaver assess this as about a 10% advantage to Georgia.

Th- you don't really overcome it, right? You have to play through it.

There is no overcoming it.

Now, I think what'll be really interesting is what happens when on year eight of this 10-year USTA deal, the USTA, the UCF program is just a complete powerhouse because they get to play NCAAs every year at their home site.

Then how do people feel about this being a neutral site? So I mean, nothing really to add about this one.

It's about a 10% advantage if we take Mark Weaver's word for it.

I think, uh, the flip side of that is that it's incredibly special experience to have to overcome that 10% home court advantage, and I think it's interesting.

I mean, uh, from anyone you talk to, it's a big advantage to be able to play this event at home.

Like, the fans are one part of that, but the other part of it is just being in your own bed, in your own routine, probably being able to decouple some of your day-to-day with the event, not be so tournament-focused all the time.

So that is a huge advantage for whoever is hosting this event.

But the reality is, is that in my 10... s- since 2010 of attending this event, the only team I've ever seen win at home is the Wake Forest men in 2018.

So that's a lot of years where the home team has not actually won the event.

A lot of Georgia teams, right? 2010, 2012, 2014, 2017, a lot of Georgia teams that did not win.

We saw Baylor.

We saw Oklahoma State, Stanford.

Actually, the Stanford women did not win in 2011, ironically enough, just given how strong of a program they've been.

So it hasn't been that big of an advantage, um, for these programs to win, and if you go back and you look-Over the course of history, even prior to me attending, previously, a few decades ago, the way that they calculated the team event was through kind of points you would get in the individual event.

But then, what was it, 1979 on the men's side, and of course, women's tennis became an NCAA sport in 1982.

So since then, the Dan Magill Tennis Complex in Athens has hosted on the men's side 29 times, and the Georgia men have won six times.

Now, five of their six wins were in Athens.

On the women's side, they had hosted eight times, and only one of their three wins came in Athens.

So overall, definitely an advantage, but not exactly a guarantee slam dunk that if you host, you will win.