The steering committee for Minneapolis' bid for a Final Four presented its final pitch to the NCAA men's basketball committee Tuesday in Indianapolis, and now it must wait until Friday to hear whether they struck a winning nerve.
Minneapolis' final bid for Final Four goes 'flawlessly'
November 14, 2014 at 5:24PM
"Our presentation went off flawlessly," Michele Kelm-Helgen, steering committee spokeswoman and Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority chairwoman, told the Star Tribune on Tuesday afternoon. "We presented everything we wanted to in the way we wanted it to be presented. The committee seemed to react positively. Obviously, we won't know until Friday."
The decisions for each of the four years in question, 2017-2020, will be announced on Friday at 4:30 p.m. on CBS Sports' Inside College basketball show.
The steering committee's one-hour presentation consisted of original videos, talks by each committee member and fielding questions from the NCAA committee members, Kelm-Helgen said.
Minneapolis is one of eight cities — joining New Orleans, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Dallas, Phoenix, San Antonio and St. Louis — that were named finalists to receive a Final Four in the four-year cycle of 2017-2020.
The Meet Minneapolis civic group is specifically bidding for three years, 2018-20, taking into consideration the expected fall 2016 completion of the new Vikings stadium, which will host a Super Bowl in February 2018. Three other cities presented Tuesday, and the remaining four will present on Wednesday.
On Friday at 5 p.m., Meet Minneapolis' leaders — Kelm-Helgen, University of Minnesota athletic director Norwood Teague, Meet Minneapolis CEO Melvin Tennant and co-chairs David Mortenson, president of Mortenson Construction, and Mary Brainard, the president and CEO of Health Partners — will gather at the University of Minnesota and take questions from the media, regardless of the decision.
"We're inviting all the people who worked on the bid to watch it together, and so one way or another, we certainly will have a bit of a celebration," Kelm-Helgen said. "I think everyone felt like we put our best foot forward and we really had an excellent bid."
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