Two new classes about March Madness’ Final Four launched this semester. Photo by Drew Kosmak.

BROOKS BAKER-WATSON | STAFF REPORTER | bbakerwatson@butler.edu 

When Butler University and March Madness are mentioned together, the memories of back-to-back Final Four seasons do not trail far behind. In fact, the tournament this year will mark the 15th anniversary of the Bulldogs’ last visit to the Final Four, where they beat Virginia Commonwealth University to send them to the National Championship Game. 

Flash-forward to 2026, and the Dawgs will once again represent the university in and around the Final Four. Off the court, that is — at least for right now. 

Butler’s College of Communication, in partnership with the Indiana Sports Corp and the NCAA, offered two new classes this spring centered around the Final Four, which is being hosted this year in Indianapolis.

One class — taught by Assistant Professor of Creative Media and Entertainment Eric Hahn — is working to produce a documentary about the NCAA’s literacy initiative. The other class — co-instructed by Strategic Communication Lecturer Robert Schultz and Journalism and Creative Media Professor Lee Farquhar — is learning about the behind-the-scenes portion of the Final Four to eventually help work the event. 

To learn how to run one of America’s largest sporting events, the plan right now is to have students attend NCAA-run experiences. For example, Hahn’s class travels around Indiana to record literacy drives set up by the NCAA at local schools, while Farquhar and Schultz’s class will help the organization operate smaller events related to the tournament. 

For Farquhar and Schultz’s class specifically, the students will even participate in a mock “Selection Sunday” set up by the NCAA to give students a taste of what it is like to run the real thing. 

When it comes to how these classes came to be in the first place, Schultz credited JoAn Scott, vice president of men’s basketball at the NCAA, for helping formulate the courses. 

“This class was a brainchild of JoAn Scott,” Schultz said. “She’s a Butler [graduate], she got her Master’s degree [from here] and she now runs the Final Four for the NCAA.” 

Scott serves as the liaison between Butler and the NCAA, who are providing content each week for the classes throughout the semester. 

In conjunction with the content, Schultz also acknowledged how his former experience as an adjunct professor at Butler led to the development of the courses.

“I taught a similar class when I was an adjunct [professor] here in 2010, and it was just a class that I developed on my own,” Schultz said. “It was a spring semester class leading up to [the Final Four]. That Final Four was in Indianapolis, [and] having our Butler students [at the time] so engaged in the fabric of putting on a Final Four was incredible. It was natural that now [since we have the Final Four back in town], [we asked ourselves] ‘What are we going to do to connect our students to [this opportunity]?’” 

For what students will gain out of these classes, Farquhar thinks that there will be multiple opportunities for students to make connections and venture down certain networking avenues. 

“There [are] a number of vantage points I think they’re going to get,” Farquhar said. “It’s opening [their] eyes to all that goes into these events and all the various career paths, part of it is also contacts — making connections with folks at the NCAA, Indiana Sports Corp [and] other partners that work with those two entities — then the third part is the hands-on experience of working at these events.” 

Junior sports media major Brendan O’Rourke, who is taking one of the classes, also believes that these lectures will serve as useful building blocks for the future. 

“The class is a really good opportunity to learn what it’s like to put on major sporting events such as the Final Four,” O’Rourke said. “There [are] a lot of good guest speakers who have experience working in all sorts of positions within sports, and they will [bring] their knowledge [to] us. [Their experiences] are insightful to us [as] students who are still trying to figure out what we want to do.”

Although the past and present curricula’s end goals for the students are similar to one another, the material of the courses differs vastly from what they were then. The new Butler Institute for Sports and Entertainment (BISE) program and the number of students taking the classes were two of the factors that caused changes to be made, with the current course content relying more on practical experiences, guest speakers and the aforementioned partnerships with the NCAA and Indiana Sports Corp. 

Speaking as a faculty member who is new to the university, Hahn believes that these classes speak to the core values of Butler. 

“I think it’s such a cool opportunity,” Hahn said. “In my short time at Butler, [one of the things] I’ve loved about this university the most is that it seems like we’re not just closed off into the classroom … It’s really about creating those connections and opportunities to explore outside of Butler and to work on projects that are meaningful and will carry along with the student after they leave.”

As opportunities like these continue to come to Indianapolis, Schultz hopes that Butler will continue to capitalize on these moments. 

“All of this is happening, and if we just sat here — 15 minutes from the heart of collegiate basketball — and we’re just twiddling our thumbs, then shame on us as an institution,” Schultz said. “We’re all in.”