Indianapolis, IN: NCAA Hall of Champions

We had tickets to the Pacers game Thursday night, and Eric very graciously took off the whole day so we could spend it together in Indy. We went up after lunch and, in honor of March Madness, decided to check out the NCAA Hall of Champions.

Normal admission costs for adults is $5 each ($3 for kids 6-18, seniors, and kids under 6 are free). They are closed on Mondays but have extended hours this weekend for the Women's Final Four games in town. We found a Groupon to make it $5 total for us.

$5 wound up being about the right cost for us. There is a lot of reading material here - information about the various sports the NCAA has (did you know there is fencing?), as well as lots of touchscreens to see current team rankings.

The Hall of Honor area is pretty neat. The screen in the middle lets you search for particular schools to find the years someone from that school won an award (although it doesn't tell you who the actual award winner is, which was frustrating). We had fun with the touchscreen.

There was almost an over-emphasis on GPA requirements (this entire hallway was covered in these 2.3 posters -- there were way more than are in the photo). As a college instructor, I am glad they emphasize the student part of athletics as well as the sport.

There is a real half court gym with basketballs where you are allowed to shoot free throws (there were a bunch of kids playing so we did not partake in this, plus...we can shoot free throws at parks nearby whenever we want). But the coolest part of the museum are two virtual reality/actual reality screens.

This area has two of these screens (the other one is behind me in the photo). There are actual sports balls here to play with - soccer ball, basketball, baseball, football - that you throw or kick at the screen. The software lets you choose which sport to play and has a few other options (for instance, Eric and I competed with quarterback throwing, shown in the photo -- Eric won considerably). It was a lot of fun!

There isn't anything else in the rest of the museum. I get the impression that they rent out the space for events quite a bit, so probably they don't want to fill up too much else of the area. The information that's there is good, but there isn't enough to keep us (two adults) occupied for more than about 45 minutes. That said, if you need something to do this weekend in between NCAA Women's Final Four games, for $5 it's an interesting look at the various sports the NCAA offers and a chance to test your vertical leap inside the museum.