When No. 2 is no good at the NCAA Tournament

By attempting to clean up the large amount of pigeon droppings in the Douglas Avenue tunnel underneath downtown’s railroad tracks, the city of Wichita is also trying to keep a second straight NCAA basketball tournament from being remembered for poop.

The city last hosted an NCAA Tournament weekend in March 1994, when the Kansas Coliseum was selected to host for the first (and only) time. Eight schools — most notably Michigan, Maryland and Massachusetts — and their fans and media landed in Wichita.

The Coliseum served as a small but quaint host, but a main storyline for national media was being stationed in the adjacent pavilions that normally held livestock shows. The Kansas Beef Expo had wrapped up a week earlier, and while the clean-up job went well, the odor lingered.

Well, more than lingered. It was awful. Wichita took a pretty good roasting from Boston and Detroit TV reporters, and “barnyard bouquet” was part of an Eagle headline for a story about the aroma.

This time, city workers already have a head start cleaning in the railroad tunnel, which serves as the main pathway between Old Town nightlife and Intrust Bank Arena, site of next March’s regional.

Wichita deserves a clean slate for NCAA memories.

This story was originally published August 16, 2017 at 2:12 PM with the headline "When No. 2 is no good at the NCAA Tournament."