Report: SEC targeting primary site for men's basketball tournament

The SEC is discussing having its men's basketball tournament at one primary site. (Frederick Breedon/Getty Images)

The SEC is discussing having its annual men's basketball tournament at one primary site, reports Yahoo! Sports.

The league's commissioner, Mike Slive, said that the league has had success with the football championship being held in Atlanta and the baseball tournament in Hoover, Ala.

The SEC tournament has been held in Atlanta seven times, Nashville four times, New Orleans twice and Tampa once since 2000. Next year's tournament will be in Atlanta. Nashville hosted this year’s tournament and is scheduled to host it again in 2015, 2016 and 2019.

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But as crowds have dipped to sizes too small to require use of the Georgia Dome, Atlanta has not been in the rotation as often recently. Meanwhile, Nashville seems to have overtaken it as the league’s basketball site of choice.

Slive said he didn’t want to discourage other cities from showing interest in hosting the tourney. It would be bad for potential bidding to tout one site as the prohibitive favorite at this point.

“Now we have to go out and negotiate for that,” Slive said. “I’m not going to leave money in the room.”

Slive said there also was discussion with basketball coaches about non-conference scheduling, as the league attempts to improve sagging RPI numbers. The SEC has hired former NCAA tournament guru Greg Shaheen to assist in scheduling, and Shaheen is in Destin to meet with the league’s coaches.