The world of college basketball is a world filled with many in-season tournaments for hundreds of teams in small cities. In fact, Daytona Beach has a tournament, called the Glenn Wilkes Classic, with Auburn, NC State, UCF, and several others. Amazingly, Jacksonville doesn't have one, as one could be moved from one of those smaller cities.
Jacksonville had a Gator Bowl Classic tournament from 1952-1991, with some of the best teams in the nation. It drew teams like Northwestern, Florida, Duke, Wake Forest, Georgia, Indiana, Auburn, and others. When they stopped the tournament, it only got about 3,000 fans to the old arena. Now, with Jacksonville much bigger, I believe they could support a tournament.
Next year, Jacksonville will be one of the 1st and 2nd round sites for the NCAA tournament, like they were in 2006. This is the closest site to any ACC city, so teams that come here will bring big crowds. JU will host Florida on Dec. 4 at the Veteran's Memorial Arena, also.
Charleston, my home city, just started a tournament last year called the Charleston Classic. It was a success in the first year, drawing teams like Clemson and Temple. This year, South Carolina, Davidson, Tulane, and Miami are among some of the teams in the tournament.
Here is the link to their website: http://www.charlestonclassic.com/index.php
Jacksonville could include both the men and the women in this, and have a six team men's and women's tournament. The men for the first year would be smaller teams, but for the women, you could attract the top teams in the nation. You could have it in a Monday-Wednesday format, with the teams coming in on Sunday night in a opening ceremony, or have a weekend Friday-Sunday format.
This would be a great tie-in for the Gator Bowl, and if you held it right after Christmas, you could add another two or three days of full hotels.
I like the potential in this idea. I'm under the impression that many of the tournaments have to pay the major schools big money, but it could be feasible to some degree.
I'm pretty sure, however, that many of the tournaments (other than the small venues in USVI/Alaska/etc) have poor attendance.
You could get six men's teams, and since they want to make the Gator Bowl between ACC and Big Ten teams, you could have teams from those two conferences, an SEC team, and three teams from smaller conferences.
The arena is not overly booked, and you could fit three days in at the end of December for this tournament.
Why did the tournament end in 1991? Was it losing money?
For the answers to why it is no longer part of Jax' history, I think you need to ask Rick Catlett head of the GBA. Back when Jax had the ACC Championship game, Catlett planned on having the game every year, but with sagging ticket sales after the VT/FSU inagural game, the GBA and the City bet wrong, lost a boatload, and the game was shipped off to Tampa. The game did not fit NE Florida, unless FSU was in the game. Charlotte is a better spot, closer to most of the schools in the ACC.
Since the GBA is looking at adding an SEC school and an ACC school to the mix for the football game, it would make sense to do the same, and add UNF/JU to the mix for the local team. Why we don't have the tourney, to me, is all about Money, or lack of it. I am sure SMG would like to fill the arena with more than High School graduations, but so far, they have done as good a job as they do for attracting new shows to the Arena.
Call Catlett and ask him, he knows.