With just over two minutes left in overtime of the Southeastern Conference’s men’s quarterfinal game between Alabama and Mississippi State on Friday, March 14, a tornado hit the Atlanta area and damaged the Georgia Dome, where the games were being played. SEC Associate Commissioner Greg Sankey talks about the process league officials went through to decide whether to complete that game and then determine a course of action for the rest of the tournament. While the Alabama-Mississippi State game was in fact completed at the dome, the fourth quarterfinal between Georgia and Kentucky was postponed until the next day and moved to the Georgia Tech campus, along with the semifinals later that day and the final on Sunday.

 “We thought we heard thunder, then what sounded like rain and I looked up at the ceiling and saw the roof start rippling like a bed sheet. There was an immediate need to figure out what happened to the facility and what had happened outside. It takes time for reports to start filtering in. The officials at the Georgia Dome are among the greatest people I have worked with in terms of responsiveness and a willingness to do whatever it takes to accommodate difficult situations.

“The first need was to secure people’s safety. With the weather being what it was, and with that many people affected, they couldn’t just go outside. As people have correctly observed after the fact, the Alabama player who hit the shot to put that game into overtime probably saved a lot of headaches for people. Had the game ended in regulation, there would have been 5,000 or 10,000 people leave the facility directly into the storm. The amount of debris flying through the air at that time clearly would have led to injuries.

“People who could began retreating to the concourses. Obviously, the floor was cleared. Most people in the dome, though, stood where they were with puzzled looks on their faces, but the storm came and went so quickly that everyone began trying to piece together what actually had happened. So the announcement was made that there had been severe weather and we immediately began to assess what had happened to the facility.

“That process took the better part of an hour to assess clearly, and not until then were we able to think about bringing the teams back on the floor – and even then we continued to have people monitor the weather, since more storms were on the way. But there were no answers in the short term about completing the Alabama-Mississippi State game until we learned about the safety of the dome itself. Once there came to be an understanding of what had occurred, that set off a series of logistical questions or unknowns, and the first answer to those was what happened to the facility and whether it was safe and appropriate to be inside. The answer was yes – but that wasn’t possible to decide quickly.

“Then after that game, projecting forward to the rest of the tournament raised more unknowns. We made an effort to conduct a more extensive evaluation of the facility. We had to weigh more weather approaching and the state of what was happening outside the arena before determining whether the fourth quarterfinal could be played.

“We were gathering more staff, communicating with athletics directors, making sure we knew where people were located. We were having in-person discussions, calling athletics directors who were not in the building, contacting the SEC commissioner who was in Indianapolis as a member of the Division I men’s selection committee – the dome staff was talking with city officials and other safety personnel. We had to make sure we had the right people communicating on the right issues.

“We waited a while longer before people were allowed to leave the arena, simply for safety reasons. Though it wasn’t part of the plan, it turned out to be advantageous to have the possibility of a second game keep people in the arena, just for their own safety. We needed time to evaluate the ability for people to actually go outside. I didn’t get outside myself until 5:30 Saturday morning, and obviously some things had been moved around but it was still pretty shocking to see the impact of the storm.

“Around midnight Friday we knew we weren’t going to be able to use the facility for the rest of the tournament. Then at that point, we had to base whatever decision that was next in line on previous decisions that had been made. For example, you couldn’t talk about tournament scenarios until you determined what facilities were available, and you couldn’t do that until you were sure you had the right people addressing it.

“Once we determined the dome was not usable, we considered a nearby arena, but that was damaged as well. That’s when Georgia Tech emerged as an alternative. The Georgia Tech people were outstanding. I mean think about it, it’s midnight on a Friday of spring break and I’m on the phone with Senior Associate AD Paul Griffin who was incredibly accommodating by offering contact information for people we needed and offering to do whatever he could to help us out. By about 12:20, I was talking with the manager of their coliseum who lives about 40 miles away – he rode his motorcycle in. Then I was on the phone with the game operations person shortly thereafter. I can’t say enough good things about their willingness, support and hospitality. Ironically, Georgia, which hours ago might not have an opportunity to play in the NCAA tournament, now suddenly does, but only because their in-state rival went above and beyond the call of duty.

“So we gathered our staff for a 1:15 conference call with Georgia Dome officials and Georgia Tech staff to evaluate the logistics of going to Georgia Tech. There were so many things to address even the trucks that were going to be used for television purposes at Georgia Tech’s arena couldn’t be parked there because the Georgia Tech players’ cars were parked there already – the players obviously were in Charlotte for the ACC tournament and nobody knew exactly when they would return. Georgia Tech officials arranged for those cars to be towed to a safe place so the TV trucks could get in. That illustrates the lengths they went to in order to accommodate our needs.

“By about 3:30 or 4 a.m. we decided game times and format for the rest of the tournament. At that point we could deploy half our staff to deciding what we’re going to do and the other half on how, since tip-off was eight hours away.

“Among the logistical issues remaining was fan access. We had upwards of 20,000 tickets sold for the tournament, but the Georgia Tech facility would fit only about half of those, and we were going to have to kill some of those seats to begin with to accommodate the media and other people that you wouldn’t have for a regular-season game. Plus you had a skeletal staff and a campus that had no chance to plan for traffic flow and other logistics, so it wasn’t going to be the first 9,000 to enter the building but the next 9,000 that were going to be the problem.

“It just wasn’t possible to accommodate everyone – we’d lost the facility that would have provided the maximum accommodation. Our primary concern at that point was how best to allow the student-athletes to play the games, and the access we could provide fans was through TV. It was clear that all the folks with tickets were not going to fit in a 9,000-seat arena.

“In the end, being in that arena Friday night was surreal – you don’t expect rigging and roof materials to move that way. Then Saturday was a different kind of surreal – you don’t expect the SEC tournament to have empty seats or be played on a floor with Georgia Tech and ACC logos. At the end of the day, though, it was about our young people and the integrity of the competition more than anything else. Folks may disagree, but the games were still pretty intense and our people were great about how they adjusted and moved forward to manage a crisis.

“It wasn’t just the Georgia basketball team that ended up winning – it was much more than that.” 

On Monday, the conference announced that it is currently working on a refund process for the tournament. Fans will be informed through www.SECsports.com as well as the official Internet sites of the 12 SEC member institutions as information becomes available.