When the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) arrives in San Antonio for the annual men’s championship matches in April, it will bring four basketball teams, coaches and staff, and draw tens of thousands of fans and cameras.
“One team” will be ready for them.
“I came up with the phrase ‘one team,’ and it’s really simple — at the end of the day, regardless of where all of our paychecks come from, our goal is simple,” said Steve Zito, assistant director of convention and sports facilities at the Alamodome.
“It’s to provide a safe, friendly, clean facility where we’re creating lifelong memories, and everybody wants to come back.”
The NCAA Men’s Final Four is scheduled for April 5-7 at the Alamodome, with fan events starting April 4 throughout downtown.
Zito oversees a full-time city staff of 66 people at the Alamodome, and for at least the last year, they and a team of contractors have been fixing up San Antonio’s multipurpose stadium for one of the largest sporting events of the year.
Major upgrades
In reality, all the plans and preparation began in 2018, the day after the NCAA selected San Antonio for the 2025 Men’s Final Four, Zito said.
In 2023, City Council approved a proposal for over $29 million for major upgrades to the Alamodome after spending $65.5 million on major renovations in 2018.
The facility that has hosted everything from music concerts and motorsports events to marketplace exhibits and football games in its 32-year history — as well as several Final Four events — is nearly ready.
To make the dome shine for the expected 72,000 ticket holders, the staff has been doing some basic but needed cleaning and painting the exterior.
Work crews pressure-washed all the concrete, and all of that work has been ongoing, Zito said. “Getting ready for the Final Four is a daily occurrence.”
Already complete are structural repairs to the Alamodome’s distinct concrete masts, steel trusses, stay cables and masonry walls.
This week, crews with the general contractor Skanska are finishing up 18 new luxury suites and a new prep kitchen on the club level of the dome which made their debut during Monster Jam on Saturday. That brings the total number of suites to 70.
The suites are outfitted with food and beverage serving areas, televisions, in-suite seating and stadium seating. Alamodome suites for the 2018 Final Four were reported to have sold for over $55,000 each in the days leading up to the event.
The nosebleed seats are getting special treatment, too. Because the very top floor of the Alamodome was never fully finished, Zito said, a project to add new flooring, lighting, paint and concession stands has completed that part of the arena.
In the locker rooms, new lighting and carpeting was put in several months ago before football season, and power outlets were installed in each player’s locker.
New tech at the dome
For ticket holders, new technology has been added to make security screening faster as they enter the Alamodome. No more emptying your pockets or submitting to bag searches. “Literally, you can walk through without having to do all of that,” Zito said.
But especially after the recent terrorism incident in New Orleans, no one is taking security lightly.
“We just go back and we look and analyze our plan, and if there are adjustments that need to be made, we make them,” Zito said. “There is a tremendous amount of precautions that are made that nobody even knows about.
Within the next few weeks, a new sound system is also going in at the Alamodome, he added. Upgrades to equipment for broadcast production capability and signage has already been done.
In the last two weeks before the Final Four, but after the UIL Boys Basketball State Tournament March 6-8, a contractor will start installing 21,000 temporary seats for the big event.
“They actually will build out over our seats and bring those temporary seats closer to the court,” Zito said.
Since June, all the entities involved in producing the Final Four, including NCAA officials, have been meeting monthly to come up with to-do lists.
“There’s a tremendous time and effort that goes into the coordination,” Zito said. “But man, when you see us on TV and all the media attention and the dome in the background or the highlights of different things …I always said when I stop getting goosebumps on my arms … will be the last time I work.”
Zito in charge
That would be a striking end to a rich and varied career for a man like Zito, who opened the Alamodome in 1993 as the director of engineering and operations and security and later facility manager.
“I was here for the first [Final Four] in ‘98,” he said.
After eight years, Zito went to work for the San Antonio Spurs and later returned to the Alamodome in 2017 as general manager, just in time to help host the 2018 Men’s Final Four.
“We had a lot of work to do to just get the building ready … and aside from $65 million worth of projects, there was a lot to be done, and we were auditioning, in essence, for upcoming Final Fours,” he said. “We must have done pretty good.”
The city has hosted the men’s event four times — in 1998, 2004, 2008 and 2018 — and the women’s in 2002, 2010 and 2021.
In 2021, during the COVID pandemic, San Antonio hosted the entire women’s regional semifinals, the originally-awarded Final Four and championship game.
“We were creative, and we worked really close and hard with the NCAA and SALOC [San Antonio Local Organizing Committee], and we showed them what we in San Antonio are all about,” he said.
A Massachusetts native, Zito got his first job in the business while a sports management student at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
“I had seen an ad for a popcorn hawker for the [1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles], so I put on a pair of chinos and an oxford shirt, and put a resume in a backpack, and I got on my bike and rode 18 miles and pulled into a gate at Harvard stadium,” he said.
He was made assistant manager of concessions and novelty operations.
After that gutsy start and through his long career in venue management, Zito also worked in Boston, Portland, New York City and Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
Today, he works with Patricia Muzquiz-Cantor, director of the city’s Convention and Sports Facilities Department. The department also runs the Henry B. González Convention Center, Lila Cockrell Theater and Carver Cultural Center Community Center.
San Antonio will host the Women’s NCAA Final Four in 2029, but was bypassed for the men’s event in 2031.
San Antonio Sports President and CEO Jenny Carnes has said that for the NCAA to award the Final Four to San Antonio in the coming years, the organization would want to see a “reimagined” Alamodome that can stand up to newer buildings across the country.
That reimagining could happen, with Zito in position to notch another career highlight, if the city’s plan goes forward to establish a sports entertainment district centered around a new Spurs arena and a better dome.
“I think the idea of a sports district is fantastic,” he said. “We haven’t really been involved in that but depending where it all goes, we look forward to it happening.”
