Todd Golden: combining men’s and women’s Final Four ‘could be awesome’

The idea of hosting the men’s and women’s Final Fours in the same location on the same weekend has been kicked around for quite a few years now. And with the tremendous growth that women’s college basketball has seen recently, the idea continues to gain steam.

Florida men’s basketball coach Todd Golden, who is appearing in his first Final Four, was presented with that possibility during a press conference Sunday before his Gators compete for a national championship on Monday.

“I think it could be awesome,” Golden said. “I don’t have a great answer or understanding of what the logistics of that would look like. I think it might be a little difficult to do that. But, the women’s Final Four has been incredibly exciting. I think it would be pretty neat to be able to bring the fan bases of both the men’s and the women’s side together and have an experience like that. There’s never too much great basketball that you could have going on at the same place at the same time, especially in the collegiate ranks.”

One would have to imagine that combining the two events would bode well for the media output from both championships. Outlets would no longer have to choose whether to dedicate resources to one event or the other, they could simply focus all of their resources into covering one, super-sized college basketball event.

Whether the NCAA has the appetite to make a change is another question entirely. Both the men’s and women’s Final Fours have their future locations set through 2031, and none of them overlap.

There’s also the expectation that the men’s Final Four is held in a football stadium, while the women’s Final Four is traditionally held in a basketball arena (though 2029 is scheduled for the Alamodome).

Given that these locations are already set for six years into the future, it doesn’t seem likely that there will be any combining of the two competitions anytime soon. But college basketball fans can still dream.