MSR Behind the profiles: 2019 Final Four, part 2

On the press bus to the stadium for the semifinals. Credit all photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR (click on any picture for a larger image)

Over the course of the last year, I’ve had several requests from readers to shed more light on what goes on “behind the scenes” on my various stadium visits. Here’s the first in a planned series I’m calling “Behind the profiles,” giving you some flavor of the fun and interesting things and people I experience on my trips to check out stadium technology deployments. In honor of the basketball tournaments we are all now missing, here is my “trip diary” from my visit last year to Minneapolis to see how U.S. Bank Stadium’s Wi-Fi networks held up under the big-game stress — along with some other interesting side trips! Please let me know if you find these interesting or fun to read and I will write some more… 2019 was a true banner year for MSR visits!

(If you need to catch up, here is part 1 of this missive)

Sunday, April 7: Geeking out on Wi-Fi 6

If Saturday had been all about walking around, my Final Four Sunday was all about staying in. But the day of relative inaction on the basketball court played right into my strategy for the weekend, which was: Find a way to maximize my four days in Minneapolis to get the most work done possible.

Sunday, that meant I was all in with the AmpThink team, basically on two levels. One, I wanted to get a real in-depth look at the temporary Wi-Fi network the company had installed at U.S. Bank Stadium to cover the seats that weren’t part of the stadium’s usual football configuration. For the Final Four, that mean extra seats along the courtside “sidelines” that actually were erected over the lower-bowl football seats and then extended out to the edge of the hardwood floor, as well as all the temporary seats in each end zone that stretched the same way out to the basketball court.

An AmpThink under-seat Wi-Fi enclosure at the Final Four.

After a “team breakfast” at a great breakfast-diner kind of place the AmpThink team and I got inside the arena in a break between practices (you are not allowed near the court when practices are going on) and I got an up-close look at how AmpThink stretched the network from the football configuration out to the temporary Final Four floor. Though AmpThink covered most of the bowl seating at U.S. Bank Stadium with innovative railing-mounted antenna enclosures (which Verizon copied when it added DAS capacity ahead of Super Bowl 52, which was held in the stadium the year before), for the temporary seating AmpThink went with an under-seat design, with AP boxes located under the folding chairs and switches located underneath the risers.

The temporary network, as it turned out, worked very well, but the funniest story to come out of the deployment was one of theft — after Saturday’s games the network analysis showed one of the APs offline. Further exploration by the AmpThink team found that the AP itself was no longer around — some net-head fan had apparently discovered that the under-seat enclosures were not secured, and for some reason thought that a Cisco Wi-Fi AP would make for a fine Final Four gift to take home. My guess is that future temporary networks might see some zip-ties used to lock things down.

After a cool tour underneath the temporary stands to see how AmpThink wired things, we spent the better part of the afternoon hanging out and talking about Wi-Fi 6, a topic the AmpThink brain trust was well wired on. Eventually that day of brainstorming, interviewing and collaboration led to the joint AmpThink/MSR Wi-Fi 6 Research Report, which of course you may download for free.

It was the best use possible I could think of for the “day off” Sunday, where if you are involved with the Final Four you are basically waiting around until Monday night. And since the AmpThink team is rarely ever in one place together for a full day — later that year, for example, AmpThink would be busy deploying new networks at Ohio State, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Dickies Arena — it was an extremely cool opportunity to be able to spend time tapping the knowledge of AmpThink president Bill Anderson and his top lieutenants.

Still feeling the physical effects of my Saturday — and knowing Monday would be even more taxing — I headed back to the hotel in the late afternoon, catching the end of the women’s Final Four at the second of the two local brewpubs next to the Marriott. Though the championship game wouldn’t take place until Monday evening, I had an early start ahead to a long day of again, maximizing those stories.

Monday, April 8: Allianz Field, the Mall of America, and the championship game

Every quarter, Mobile Sports Report tries to find a good mix of profiles to educate its readership. Typically we try to keep the profiles in season, for relevance and timing. But other times, you just go get a good story because it’s interesting. Or, if you can, you do multiple stories on one plane ticket, something that speaks to the bottom line of being an entrepreneurial startup that has to keep an eye on the budget.

So while other “media” at the Final Four may have been taking late breakfasts or hitting the gym Monday morning, I was in an Uber out to Allianz Field, the new home of the MLS Minnesota United. Though it wasn’t scheduled to open until later in April, the folks behind the networking technology — a local company called Atomic Data — had agreed to give MSR a look-around at the Wi-Fi deployment, a great opportunity we couldn’t pass up.

An under-seat Wi-Fi enclosure at Allianz Field.

Yagya Mahadevan, enterprise project manager for Atomic Data and sort of the live-in maestro for the network at Allianz Field, met us at the entry gate and gave us the full stadium walk-around, which was great to have, bad hip issues be damned. I really liked the tour and being able to write the story about how Atomic Data got its feet in the door at a major professional venue, and hope the company can do the same for other venues in the future. I’m also hoping to get back to Allianz Field for a live game when such things start happening again, because the place just looks sharp and I am kind of all in on the way MLS teams are tapping into the fan experience without charging hundreds of dollars a seat like some other pro leagues in the U.S.

After an hour or so of touring Allianz Field it was back in another Uber to the Mall of America, where I had scheduled an interview with Janette Smrcka, then the information technology director for the Mall. (Janette is now part of the technology team at SoFi Stadium, and we hope to have more talks with her soon!) Janette, who I had gotten to know while reporting on the Wi-Fi deployment at the Mall of America, had told me about a cool new project involving wayfinding directories at the Mall, a story which fit perfectly with the new Venue Display Report series we were launching last year.

After sitting down with Janette to get the specifics on the display gear I went into the Mall itself and wandered around for a while (OK, I also did stop to get a chocolate shake at the Shake Shack) watching people use the directories. My unscientific survey showed that people used them quite a bit, with all the design elements Janette and her team coming into play, like deducing that people would be more willing to use smaller-sized displays since they could shield them with their bodies, making the interaction more private. Little things do matter in technology, and it’s not always the technology that matters.

In the mall you couldn’t forget what was going on that weekend — as if the fans wandering around in their school gear would let you. I jumped back on the light rail to get back to the hotel and had my media-celebrity moment heading up to my room, when John Feinstein himself held the door to the elevator so I could get there in time.

Wi-Fi, hoops and a brat and a beer

As soon as I got to the stadium on the press bus I skipped the whole press working-room thing and headed up to the football press box to secure a spot. Turns out I didn’t need to worry as most of the media still either wanted to be closer to the court or closer to the workroom to get their stories done on deadline. Fine for all us. By now I had completely learned all the elevator and escalator pathways I needed to know to get around the stadium in record time. I took Wi-Fi speedtests, I took DAS speedtests, I watched the crowd get into the excitement of being at the “big game.”

Some Final Four fans using directories at the Mall of America.

For sure, part of the fun of attending bucket-list events these days is tied to the mobile device. A big part of the fun. I watched many, many people take pictures of themselves and their companions, take pictures or videos of the action on the court, or just (in some cases) walk around with their phones on video broadcast, relaying the live scene to an audience of who knows who. To me that’s one of the main points of these networks our industry sets up and runs — enabling those who are lucky enough to be there live to be able to share that experience, somewhat instantly, with those closest to them (or their imagined wider audiences).

Though these stadium visits can sometimes be lonely and somewhat strange — I mean, who’s there to cheer for the Wi-Fi? — at the Final Four I considered myself part of the general audience, a witness to the fun and excitement of “being there.” And by halftime I had already done all the “work” I needed to do — the Wi-Fi was strong, as was the DAS — so I camped out in the press box and waited for the second half to begin, so I could go out and get the bratwurst and beer I felt I’d earned.

It took a little bit of walking around to find the stands I wanted to hit — I wanted a beverage that was local, not national, and a brat done right — and I found both somewhat fortunately close to the press box. I took my bounty to a stand-up counter space located just off the main upper concourse and for the time of my meal I was just another hoops fan, enjoying the close contest between Virginia and Texas Tech. Then it was back to the press box and more just-fan watching, an exciting finish and then trying to capture the perfect “confetti burst” photo for the cover of our upcoming issue.

After goodbyes to David and his crew and the AmpThink team, since I didn’t have any stories to write I was on the first press bus back to the hotel, where I quickly crashed ahead of my flight back home Tuesday morning. It was a long weekend in Minneapolis and my hip hurt, but I had done what I needed to do, notebook full of stories that I could write while I recovered from the upcoming surgery.


It’s hard to take a photo showing how a Final Four feels in a football stadium, but this isn’t bad

Showtime for the championship game


Any questions that Minneapolis knows how to do brats right?

The big football displays couldn’t be used while game action was in play, but during timeouts they were on, sometimes showing cool social media posts

The well-deserved Final Four MSR approved dinner

MSR Behind the profiles: 2019 Final Four, part 1

On the press bus to the stadium for the semifinals. Credit all photos: Paul Kapustka, MSR (click on any picture for a larger image)

Over the course of the last year, I’ve had several requests from readers to shed more light on what goes on “behind the scenes” on my various stadium visits. Here’s the first in a planned series I’m calling “Behind the profiles,” giving you some flavor of the fun and interesting things and people I experience on my trips to check out stadium technology deployments. In honor of the basketball tournaments we are all now missing, here is my “trip diary” from my visit last year to Minneapolis to see how U.S. Bank Stadium’s Wi-Fi networks held up under the big-game stress — along with some other interesting side trips! Please let me know if you find these interesting or fun to read and I will write some more… 2019 was a true banner year for MSR visits!

Friday, April 5, 2019: Getting to the Final Four, and a Prince tribute

If there was a recurring personal theme to my Final Four trip last year it was: dealing with my hip. After almost a year of putting up with various hip-related pains in November of 2018 my situation went “off the cliff” as one doctor said, rendering me unable to do much walking or any other activity. A subsequent MRI revealed that I had almost zero cartilage left in my right hip, which meant — after other MRIs confirmed it wasn’t a problem with my back, on which I had surgery 10 years ago — that I needed a hip replacement. The good news? It would turn out to be the most pain-free major surgery I’d ever had or heard of. It was done in an outpatient procedure and I was walking without crutches five days later.

The bad news? The surgery didn’t happen until late May. In early April I was still hobbling around in a sidewinder motion, slapping lidocaine patches on and taking anti-inflammatories to make it through each day. But with the downtime associated with the surgery ahead, I had to get enough stories in my notebook to fill our spring issues — so off to Minneapolis I went.

Not all displays are digital. At MSP airport.

I can’t thank the NCAA folks enough for granting MSR a credential (they had also done so the previous year) for the Final Four. There is nothing like being on site for an actual game to see how the networks and other technologies perform. While sometimes vendors and teams are able to find us some kind of pass to get stadium access, at the biggest events having a standard media credential just makes life easier for all involved. The trick is, convincing the powers that be that MSR’s coverage is beneficial to a sports audience. (Someday, Super Bowl, someday.)

After landing at MSP airport I got an almost instant dose of what is generally called “Minnesota Nice.” I had just started ambling up the concourse toward baggage claim when a nice gent pulled up beside me in one of those golf-cart things and said, “I can spot a bum hip a mile away. Get in!”

One of the numerous airport volunteers, the “Minneapolis ambassador” spared me about 15 minutes of pain-walking, a break I welcomed. “When’s your surgery?” he asked. I told him and he replied, “you’ll kick yourself after it’s over for waiting so long. But you’ll love it.” Correct on all counts. As I got out of the cart to go down to baggage claim, a local cheerleading group was doing their moves in the airport’s main atrium. I did a quick check of the Wi-Fi (good signal) and got my bag.

The other nice thing about a real media credential is having a real room at one of the official media hotels. You do pay for it — and are required to pay for four nights no matter how many nights you are actually there — but it’s worth it. Even though our Marriott (sports writers practically live in Marriotts) was close enough to walk to the stadium (about a half-mile or so), in my condition I needed the saturation of shuttles and free rides that are de rigeur for any big event like the Final Four. After checking in I took one of the shuttles provided by Buick (NCAA sponsor) over to the stadium to get my credential and lucked out as there was no line at all, allowing me to get my badge in just a few minutes’ time.

When the Timberwolves honor local legend Prince, they get purple.

Instead of trying to find where the shuttles picked up I tapped my “insider knowledge” of Minneapolis (which I had visited several times over the past couple years) and took the light rail from right outside U.S. Bank Stadium back toward the hotel — there was a station just about a block away. Walking back I noticed one other great maybe-not-a-coincidence about the location of the media hotel I was in: There was not one, but two local brewpubs on the separate street corners from the hotel entrance. And yes, over the weekend I visited them both. Good local beer and good pub-fare food. And of course, friendly people working there.

As if I wasn’t going to see enough basketball, on Friday night I went to the Target Center to watch the Timberwolves play the Miami Heat. It was a great way to relax into the weekend, and for a change I didn’t even go around and test the Wi-Fi (we had done a profile of the arena’s new technology the year before). And the game was one of the several “Prince tribute” events the Wolves had last year, where they wore purple jerseys and a band played Prince tunes at halftime. Very cool, very Minneapolis.

Saturday, April 6: Semifinals and Sally’s Saloon

With the semifinal games not starting until early evening, there was time to kill — so I hopped on the light rail again and crossed the Mississippi River over to the University of Minnesota area, where I had a late lunch at Sally’s Saloon, one of the several iconic U of Minn watering holes. Since it was rainy and chilly out I went with a good bowl of chicken soup while I watched the end of the inaugural women’s tournament at Augusta National — what a great way to get psyched for the Masters. And what great golf! Would love to come back and tip one at Sally’s pre- or post-football game. It just has that perfect college-bar feel.

Would love to get back here to see a Minnesota hockey game. Sieve!

After the local-scene interlude I went back to the hotel and boarded an early bus to the stadium, more to get the lay of the land than to file any stories. The great thing about my work as opposed to most writers there is that I wasn’t on deadline — my profiles wouldn’t appear until our June issue. After finding my assigned seat — way back in the back row of the press area behind one of the hoops — I went down to the floor to walk around before it got closed off. It’s cool to see the setup up close, the raised playing court, the band areas and wander right up to the NBA on TNT set in one corner, where Ernie, the Jet and Chuck (no Shaq that day) were holding court, live.

The terrible sight lines from my seat were not an issue — after all, my work was not to watch the game but to wander the stadium as the games went on, testing the wireless networks while the fans gave them the ultimate selfie workout. It’s just nice to have a place to rest (especially if your hip hurts), so it’s a nice perk. As it turns out, my seating arrangement was about to get much better (for me) in short time.

I did make it back to the “press working room,” a cordoned-off wide space in the bowels of the building. Think: concrete floors, hanging-drape walls, plastic row tables and folding chairs. Those are the typical conditions for big-time sports writers, photogs, bloggers and others at the big events. With something like 2,000 credentialed media, a standard press box won’t do.

During pregame, pretty much any press pass gets you close to the floor.

While spartan, the press rooms do have everything you really need to get the job done: Nearby access to interviews (a separate stage where they bring players and coaches in), power strips everywhere for laptops and phones, and serious Wi-Fi coverage in the form of temporary antennas on poles throughout the room. There’s also a basic but efficient food and drink service, which I avoided other than getting sodas and coffee. I’d just rather get stadium food instead of steam-tray stuff, to get a sense of the venue’s “flavor” if you will. Plus as I said earlier I’m not on deadline and usually not sitting in a seat so it’s easier to just grab something as I walk around.

I next went to find my networking types and was directed to the football press box, where David Kingsbury, director of IT for the stadium, had set up the NOC HQ in what looked like a coaches’ box. Like any good general David had set up his troops for success with a wide array of healthy and not-so-healthy snacks, which I was allowed to partake in. I did enjoy my fair share of Kind bars over the weekend, and was reminded (after a taste test) just how tooth-twistingly sweet a Twinkie is. (Rejected after one bite.)

While waiting for David and his team to find some time for a quick interview I noticed that the football press box was completely empty — and thought, why not set up here as a base for my stuff and to watch the games when I needed a break? For someone who wanted to spend the day roving around the venue, the football press box was a much better base location than my official press seat (which involved a series of tunnels and stairs to get to). Plus it had comfy office-chair type seating and lots of room to spread out. Sure the court was far away, but all the multiple TVs in the press box were live, giving you as good a view as anyone’s living room couch.

The press working room was well covered by temporary Wi-Fi APs.

Sometime during the night the press folks let the rest of the media know they could sit in the football press box on a first-come, first-serve basis, and while some others eventually joined me the place never got full. While there was none of the food or beverage service usually in place for Vikings games, the added bonus of the football press box was that it has its own restrooms — something not available near the courtside seats. And in the temporary official press room, the facilites were a trucked-in port-a-potty trailer.

Since I had only made it to the final game of last year’s championship I was interested to see what the crowds would be like for the semifinals — would the second game fans skip the opener and arrive after halftime? The answer — not a chance. If you’re at the Final Four, you do the Final Four, and the stadium was packed by tipoff of game 1. And for the first time, the Final Four was allowing alcohol sales, and beer was very popular at the many concession stands and kiosks around the venue. AmpThink, which in addition to having done the regular stadium Wi-Fi had also constructed a temporary Wi-Fi network for the additional courtside seats, put all the switches it used under the stands inside waterproof cases — in part to protect from inevitable beer spills.

Over the course of the first game, I wore myself out completely, overdoing it a bit with stadium laps to see if the network held up everywhere, from the courtside seats to the highest seats up in the rafters. What impressed me was how many people were really into the games, even from far-away seats. I tried to find the perfect picture from behind, of a fan using a phone to record the action, but truthfully my opportunities were few and far between, as most people really paid attention to the action on the court. One thing that surprised me was how fast the Final Four gear sold out: There was one hat I thought was really neat, and thought “well, I’ll get one Monday.” Rookie move. By the second game Saturday, there were almost no hats at all of any kind available, with the design I wanted long gone. Next time, I’ll buy any swag on Friday at the media hotel, where there was a pop-up stand for one day only.

In between games I retreated to my football press box seat, and found some time to interview David Kingsbury and his staff about not just the Wi-Fi and DAS but the displays as well, including the temporary centerhung board which was pretty amazing for a once-only apparatus. In addition to multiple screens it also had the capability to project images onto the court itself, an extra kind of screen that really brought pregame ceremonies to life.

With the games finally over and Monday’s championship between Virginia and Texas Tech set, I walked out with the AmpThink team, skipping the masses that formed a huge line at the light rail station outside the stadium. However, we didn’t do much better trying to hail an Uber or Lyft, having to walk nine blocks away from the stadium before we could get clear enough from crowds to get an SUV driver to pick up all seven of us. A late-night dinner at an excellent brewpub capped a great night of hoops and networking. More later this weekend on the rest of the weekend, including trips to a soccer stadium and the Mall of America!

Here’s the link to part 2 of the story.

More photos below!

Up close and personal with the NBA on TNT crew

The good, bad and the ugly at the NOC HQ snack table


Some of the $5 million in curtains U.S. Bank Stadium had to set up to keep the light out


Kept trying to find the perfect ‘fan with a camera’ shot. Bonus geek points if you can spot the MatSing ball antennas


Republic, one of the two brewpubs on either side of the media hotel


My football press box perch

The crush at the light rail station after the semifinals

DIY method brings Wi-Fi to Rutgers basketball arena

The Rutgers Scarlet Knights men’s basketball team takes on the Indiana Hoosiers at Rutgers Athletic Center on Jan. 15, 2020. (Click on any picture for a larger image) Credit: Ben Solomon/Rutgers Athletics

It was a bit more complicated than a trip to Home Depot, but when the Rutgers University IT team wanted to bring fan-facing Wi-Fi to the school’s basketball arena but didn’t have the budget for a big-name contractor or vendor deal, it did what many weekend warriors do when faced with the same build vs. buy decision:

They did it themselves.

By purchasing lower-cost Wi-Fi gear and doing almost all of the design and deployment work in-house, the Rutgers IT team was able to bring a satisfactory level of coverage to the 8,000-seat Rutgers Athletic Center for a total price tag of about $62,000, according to representatives from the school’s athletic IT department. The Rutgers team first told their story at this year’s College Athletics IT peer conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and then provided more details in a follow-up interview with Mobile Sports Report.

The success of the DIY Wi-Fi deployment now has the Rutgers IT team looking at a similar method for bringing Wi-Fi to the school’s football stadium, starting with a localized deployment in the student section where it anticipates needs will be the highest. While fans at events in the “RAC” are probably happy for the connectivity, what might even be more important is the confidence and experience gained by the IT team by rolling up its sleeves and finding a way to deliver the network at a very reasonable price.

“The practical experience of doing this ourselves was just so much more interesting than attending conferences or networking classes,” said Jonathan Beal, systems administrator for the Rutgers athletics IT team. “I’d encourage smaller schools to look into something like this.”

Turnkey system prices ‘out of range’

Editor’s note: This profile is from our latest STADIUM TECH REPORT, which is available to read instantly online or as a free PDF download! Inside the issue is a profile of Dickies Arena in Fort Worth and a recap of a record Wi-Fi day at Super Bowl LIV! Start reading the issue now online or download a free copy!

A look at the tilt angles for the Wi-Fi APs. Credit: Rutgers Athletics

Though Rutgers isn’t exactly small (enrollment is just more than 50,000 at the main campus in New Brunswick, N.J.) and while its teams are part of the major Big Ten conference, the school simply doesn’t have the athletic-department budgets that some of its conference brethren do. And while Beal said that the school is regularly approached by technology vendors with stadium Wi-Fi pitches, the million-dollar-plus price tags for deployments are a non-starter for Rutgers.

“We get approached year after year, but the quotes are always out of our [budget] range,” Beal said. But at the college IT conference in 2019, Beal said the Rutgers team was interested in a presentation from the IT department at the University of Virginia, where that school used lower-cost equipment from Wi-Fi gear provider Ubiquiti to bring Wi-Fi to Virginia’s football stadium.

While Beal said the Virginia team detailed some initial failures in their deployment program, eventually they got it on track, and inspired the Rutgers crew to see if they could chart a similar path.

“We took notes, came back to New Jersey, made some phone calls, and asked ‘how far could we go?’,” Beal said. At the beginning, the team guessed they might be able to get the school to “absorb the cost” of a test deployment either in the basketball arena or the football stadium. What tipped the project in the basketball arena’s favor was the existence of some recently installed conduits leading to the rafters, where some biometric tracking equipment and some previous DAS gear had been installed.

“For the football stadium, the [conduit] pathways are challenging – it’s going to be costly when we do that,” Beal said.

After trying out a few test APs sent over by Ubiquiti the Rutgers team felt confident in their choice of hard- ware, and submitted a budget for $60,000 – which was quickly approved. “It was an easier sell than we thought,” said Beal. “They [the administration] trusted us.”

Overhead vs. under seat

Choosing to put Wi-Fi in the rafters pointing down instead of under the seats pointing up was another con- scious choice Rutgers made after noticing a difference between how football fans and basketball fans use in-venue wireless.

“We noticed that at football games fans download [data] and watch stuff, then go back to watching the game,” Beal said. “For basketball it’s a totally different user experience. People aren’t watching things on their phones, but they are uploading to Instagram.”

A look up at some of the Wi-Fi APs. Credit: Rutgers Athletics

So instead of solving for density and coverage (where under-seat offers a generally better experience) the Rutgers team aimed for the best upload experience for the money – which meant they could do top-down APs using line-of-sight tuning.

With a blend of a 3D rendering of the entire seating bowl (done with 360-degree cameras) and some help from Ekahau survey tools, the Rutgers team pinpointed the optimal placement points for the APs in the rafters. Since the seating in “The RAC” is mostly only on the two sides of the court – and not behind the baskets – the deployment became a fairly uncomplicated tale of two halves, with two APs for each sector.

Some tuning revealed a need to tilt the top AP down from a straight horizontal mount top since the tin roof of the RAC (which contributes to the venue’s historic reputation for being loud and an intimidating place to play) also reflects RF signals.

“Everything bounces around up there off the roof, including the RF,” said Beal. With 20 APs in the rafters (and four more down at court level for other areas) Rutgers was able to get the kind of coverage they wanted. After installing the APs with help from campus technicians – including installing backup chains to keep APs from falling onto any guests – it was time for the next step: Seeing what happened when fans joined the network.

Captive portal or free access?

Like almost every other venue that has installed Wi- Fi for guests, Rutgers struggled with how to make access available. Should it just be free to use with no restrictions, or should they try to use some kind of captive portal to get an email address or other identifying information so that the school could market to event attendees?

Joe Vassilatos, unit computing manager for the Rutgers athletics IT team, said there was some favor of a Facebook sign-in method from the Rutgers marketing team, because of the ease of identification. But Vassilatos said the IT team was “wary” of using a Facebook method, something Beal agreed with.

“We got some feedback from other schools that if you put that [Facebook sign-in] in, nobody uses the network,” said Beal.

Instead, the team opted for a sign-in method that uses a one-time SMS code with a 4-digit number that fans must enter to get access to the network. But both Beal and Vassilatos hoped that in the future there might be other ways to monetize the network – like doing offload for cellular carriers – that would allow them to make access even easier.

A top-down look at the mounting solution for the APs. Credit: Rutgers Athletics

With the network in place during this past basketball season, Rutgers saw good numbers on the usage side, with anywhere from 600 to 800 people using the network at games this winter. Beal said network statistics showed that at most games, 20 percent of the visitors connected to the network at least once, with 10 percent having dwell times in the 20- to 50-minute range.

“That shows they’re a real user, and not just a visitor,” Beal said.

For the last three games of the season, the Rutgers network got a promotional boost from a pregame light show that included fans using their mobile devices. Part of the promotion included instructions to log on to the Wi-Fi.

But according to Beal, the network wasn’t ever a secret.

“The first thing people do in any place is check for free Wi-Fi,” Beal said. “And if people are happy with it, it’s good enough.”

Next steps: Planning for football

For this offseason, the new project for the Rutgers IT team is bringing Wi-Fi to the student section of the football stadium, where they are planning to go with an under-seat approach. According to both Beal and Vassilatos deployment there is going to be more of a tuning challenge since Rutgers students rarely sit in one place, but instead crowd the area and even stand on bleachers trying to cram in.

But with a functional Wi-Fi network now inside inside the basketball arena, a place known as “The Trapezoid of Terror” (for its unique sloped-walls architecture), the Rutgers IT team is confident of its deployment chops, and takes great pride in knowing that more events can be held there with good connectivity, including more potential money-making events like career fairs and concerts.

“In the past when we had graduation ceremonies or other events [in the RAC] we had to bring out portable Wi-Fi,” Beal said. “Now we can take that load on the sta- dium network.”

For Vassilatos, the Wi-Fi is a reason for a little bit of chest-beating.

“IT is usually very inward-facing, and this was our chance to utilize our skill set to add to the bravado of the athletic experience,” Vassilatos said. “We took this on our own to implement, and we’re better from the experience.”

NCAA cancels March Madness; MLB, NHL, MLS susupend schedules

In another somewhat inevitable decision, the NCAA on Thursday announced it was canceling the men’s and women’s Division I basketball tournaments, “as well as all remaining winter and spring NCAA championships.” After the NBA suspended its season Wednesday night and most conferences canceled their year-end tournaments in progress, it was quickly apparent that the NCAA’s Wednesday decision to hold games without fans was not going to be a good enough measure given the seriousness of the growing coronavirus pandemic.

Also on Thursday all of the other top professional sports with active schedules announced postponements to games, including Major League Baseball’s decision to postpone opening day by at least two weeks and to cancel spring training; the NHL’s decision to postpone its current season; and Major League Soccer’s decision to suspend its season for 30 days.

Statement tweets below.

NCAA mum on coronavirus tourney plans while two conferences close doors to fans

The NCAA has yet to commit to any measures to exclude fans or cancel games for its upcoming men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, even as two conferences closed their tournament doors to fans and one canceled its tournaments altogether.

In a statement on its website, the NCAA put off making a decision Tuesday, even as the Ivy League canceled its conference tournaments and the Big West and the Mid-American Conference closed their tournaments to fans. The NCAA, whose tournaments are scheduled to begin next week, said:

The NCAA continues to assess how COVID-19 impacts the conduct of our tournaments and events. We are consulting with public health officials and our COVID-19 advisory panel, who are leading experts in epidemiology and public health, and will make decisions in the coming days.

UPDATE, March 11: The NCAA now says its tourney games will be played without fans.

The Big West, whose tournaments will be played in Southern California, had a different take:

“The Big West Board of Directors, comprised of the chief executive officers of the nine member universities, strongly feel that this is a prudent way to help slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus while being sensitive to our student-athletes who have pointed towards playing in the tournament all season,” said Big West Commissioner Dennis Farrell in a statement on the conference’s website.

The Ivy League, meanwhile, canceled its year-end tournaments completely, naming the Yale men’s team and the Princeton women’s team, the leagues’ regular-season champions, as its NCAA tournament representatives.

BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament postponed due to coronavirus

One of the bigger non-major tennis tournaments in the U.S., the BNP Paribas Open, has been postponed indefinitely this year due to a local confirmed case of the coronavirus in southern California.

In a post on the tournament’s website, officials said they are exploring options to hold the tournament on a later date, but have no set plan yet.

“We are very disappointed that the tournament will not take place, but the health and safety of the local community, fans, players, volunteers, sponsors, employees, vendors, and everyone involved with the event is of paramount importance,” said tournament director Tommy Haas, in a prepared statement. Here is the lead paragraph from the website page announcing the postponement:

The Riverside County Public Health Department has declared a public health emergency for the Coachella Valley after a confirmed case of coronavirus (COVID-19) locally. As a result, the 2020 BNP Paribas Open will not take place at this time due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus and the safety of the participants and attendees at the event. This is following the guidance of medical professionals, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and State of California.

The BNP Paribas Open is the biggest sports event so far to be canceled or postponed due to the virus. Previously this year the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona, Spain, was canceled, as was the South by Southwest conference in Texas, which was scheduled for later this month.

In the sports world, the focus now shifts to the NCAA and its upcoming men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, which are scheduled to begin next week. Among the options being talked about in news reports are holding games at fewer arenas, or holding games in empty stadiums. As of Sunday night, there was no definitive plan for the NCAA events.

Other observers are looking further ahead in the sports schedule and questioning whether the NFL should eliminate the fan presence from its annual draft. The 2020 draft, scheduled for late April in Las Vegas, had been expected to draw as many as 300,000 visitors to the event.

Stay tuned for more news as we are sure this will become somewhat of a daily thing as the virus spreads.

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