Between 1980 and 2015, the city of Indianapolis hosted the NCAA Men’s Division 1 basketball tournament’s Final Four seven times, providing an environment for numerous showdowns between various famed coaches and players in NCAA history. The city’s ability to attract this prestigious tournament over the decades reflects the community’s successful attempts at marketing itself as a venue for amateur sports. It also demonstrated the suitability of the Indiana Convention Center, the former Hoosier Dome, and Lucas Oil Stadium for such events.

Indianapolis’ first NCAA Basketball finals came on March 24, 1980, when the University of Louisville defeated UCLA 59-54 before 16,637 spectators at Market Square Arena. UCLA fell for the first time in 11 Final Four appearances. (The Bruins later vacated their runner-up status due to the inadvertent use of an ineligible player.) The 1980 tournament featured the first 48-team field and the lifting of a previous rule that had limited two-teams per conference.

For Indianapolis’ second Final Four, Duke University, in its fifth Final Four appearance in six years, beat the University of Kansas 72-65 on April 1, 1991, with 47,185 fans in the Hoosier Dome. Mike Krzyzewski, a former assistant coach under Bob Knight at Indiana University, coached Duke. This was the first of Krzyzewski’s five NCAA championships.

In 1997, Indianapolis’ third round of hosting the Final Four, Arizona State University beat the University of Kentucky by a score of 84-79 in the championship game. Just three years later, in 2000, Indianapolis hosted the Final Four again, this time Michigan State won over the University of Florida in the championship game by a score of 89-76. Both coaches in the game, Tom Izzo and Billy Donovan became legendary figures in college basketball during the 2000s, leading their teams to multiple Final Fours over the course of the decade.

Six years later, in 2006, Donovan led Florida back to Indianapolis to claim his first NCAA title. The play of future NBA stars like Al Horford and Joakim Noah dominated as Florida beat UCLA 73-57 in the championship game. This was the last Final Four played in the Hoosier Dome before it was imploded in December 2008.

Four years later, in 2010, Indianapolis hosted its sixth Final Four, the first to take place in Lucas Oil Stadium. This tournament proved to be particularly memorable as the hometown Butler Bulldogs, coached by Brad Stevens and led by players like Gordon Hayward, made a Cinderella run to the championship game, where they faced the Duke Blue Devils. While the game remained extremely close in the final minutes of the match-up, Duke, again coached by Krzyzewski, claimed the title by a mere two points after Hayward’s desperate half-court heave just narrowly clattered off the rim as time expired. This was Krzyzewski’s fourth NCAA title. The run to the title game also proved to be a legend-making experience for Stevens, both in the eyes of Indianapolis citizens and national audiences.

In 2015, Indianapolis once again saw Krzyzewski lead his Blue Devils to his fifth title. During this Final Four’s championship game, Duke, driven by the play of freshman Jahlil Okafor, beat the Wisconsin Badgers 68-63. This was the second NCAA Final Four to be hosted in Lucas Oil Stadium.

Indianapolis is slated to host the NCAA Final Four again in 2021 as well as every five years after that until 2040. However, 2021’s tourney will be a singularly unique event as Indianapolis will be not only hosting the Final Four but the entire NCAA tournament. Built on the pre-existing partnership between the city and the NCAA, the 2021 tournament was shifted entirely to Indianapolis in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. After losing out on around $1 billion in revenue following the cancellation of the 2020 tournament for safety purposes related to the pandemic, the NCAA planned to find a safe way of still hosting the following year’s event. The organization determined Indianapolis (with its numerous surrounding basketball arenas) could host all 68 teams in an environment approximating the bubble experience that the NBA undertook for its 2020 playoffs at Walt Disney World.