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SAFE BET: VEGAS SET TO BID TO HOST NUMEROUS NCAA EVENTS By Doug Feinberg | The Associated Press

Las Vegas is going to take a chance on hosting major college sporting events.

The city is set to bid on nearly a half dozen different NCAA championship events, includ-ing women's basketball.

The NCAA will start accepting bids Monday on nearly two dozen sports championships over all three divisions. This is the first year that Las Vegas is eligible to bid after the governing body for college sports indefinitely suspended a ban last year that prevented events from being host-ed in states that accept wagers on single games.

George Kliavkoff, who is MGM's President of Entertainment and Sports, told The Associ-ated Press last week that his group — in con-junction with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor Authority — plan on bidding to host women's basketball as well as at least five other sports. Those could include the Frozen Four, wrestling and women's volleyball champion-ships.

"We're looking for scaled opportunities. Sports that attract lots of fans and some places we can reconfigure the way the events are held to attract more fans," he said.

Kliavkoff thinks Las Vegas is positioned well for women's basketball and its potential new regional format. The NCAA women's basketball committee suggested earlier this month changing the format for the regionals starting in 2023 by having two cities host eight teams each in the Sweet 16 instead of having four sites.

"Nevada is such a great place and Las Vegas is such an excellent place to hold a championship or regional," Kliavkoff said. "We're uniquely positioned since we have T-Mobile Arena, MGM Garden Arena and Mandalay Bays. We have three event centers. We have knowledge how to do this. There are dozens of hotels in town that have price points for every fan. We're a city that's easy to get to with direct non-stop flights from almost everywhere in the country."

Moving to a two-site format, the commit-tee noted, would elevate and enhance the

student-athlete experience, enhance broadcast coverage, create opportunity for growth of the sport and championship, build the brand of women's basketball and expand programming targeting strategic plan initiatives that were announced in the NCAA Women's Basketball Strategic Plan.

"We'll see how it falls out as bids come in," NCAA vice president for women's basketball Lynn Holzman said. "It's new ground we're treading. Moving from four to two sites for regionals."

While Holzman wouldn't say whether Las Vegas has a leg-up on other cities, she is very familiar with basketball tournaments being played there. She was commissioner of the West Coast Conference, which has played its tournament in Las Vegas for the last decade.

Las Vegas would have no problems hosting eight teams and their fans in the new format. It would make sense for the NCAA to look at having one site on the West Coast and one on the East Coast for the new format to help with television windows for their partner ESPN. MGM also operates the arena in Springfield, Massachusetts, so the company could bid for an East Coast site, as well.

Mohegan Sun, which has hosted many col-lege basketball events, as well as a WNBA team, has said it is considering bidding for the regional, too.

With regionals available from 2023-26 and the Final Four in 2025 and 2026, Kliavkoff said that he expects Las Vegas to put in a series of bids for them and other NCAA events.

"For the sports we're interested in, we'll try and get as many yeses as possible," he said. "We'll bid for multiple years. It probably will depend on the different sports we bid for. We think there are benefits to being a known place you come back every year."

The NCAA said it would help Las Vegas and other cities learn the details of putting in bids. The college governing body is hosting a NCAA Championship Hosting Symposium on Sept.

18. Women's basketball future sites will be announced in October 2020.

While the men's basketball Final Four isn't in this bid cycle, regionals are available from 2023-26. The men's basketball committee vis-ited Las Vegas earlier this year and toured the new Oakland Raiders football stadium that will be ready next year, as well as T-Mobile Arena. Las Vegas would be interested in hosting those regionals as well. Potentially they could host the men's and women's regionals in the same year.

"Basketball is slowly realizing that Las Vegas is the second home for basketball in the United States," Kliavkoff said. "We have the summer league, the G-league. We are in discussion on bringing more here. We have the Aces. We have more and more college tournaments. This is the home for lots of AAU tournaments, high school tournaments and 3-on-3 basketball. We think of this as one of the best basketball homes in the country and continue to build on that. We'll put in bids for the years that are available. By definition, the men's and women's basketball will be overlapping a few years and we will be bidding on them."

With over 100,000 hotel rooms on the strip and the three venues, hosting both the men's and women's regionals wouldn't be a problem.

The College Football Playoff has two more championship game sites still to be chosen dur-ing the 12-year contract with ESPN that runs through the 2025 season. CFP operates outside the NCAA and is essentially run by the FBS conference commissioners. It is not obligated to follow NCAA rules.

The new Las Vegas stadium could be a con-tender to host. The stadium will host a bowl game matching the Pac-12 and Southeastern Conference, starting with the 2020 season. The Pac-12 championship game is also mov-ing to Las Vegas. The conference announced earlier this year it will play its title game in Las Vegas in 2021 and '22.

BANANA INDUSTRY ON ALERT AFTER DISEASE ARRIVES IN COLOMBIA By Manuel Rueda And Candice Choi | The Associated Press

It might not be obvious at the supermarket, but the banana industry is fighting to protect the most popular variety of the fruit from a destructive fungus.

A disease that ravages banana crops has made its long-dreaded arrival in Latin America, the biggest exporter of the crop. That's reigniting worries about the global market's dependence on a single type of banana, the Cavendish, which is known for its durability in shipping.

For years, scientists have said big banana companies like Chiquita and Dole would eventually need to find new banana varieties as the disease spread in countries in Asia and elsewhere. Then this month, the fungus was confirmed in Colombia, one of the top exporters in Latin America, prompting officials in the country to declare a state of emergency.

Banana industry watchers say it's more proof the Cavendish's days are numbered, but that there's still plenty of time to find alternatives.

"I don't think it's going to impact the availability of the Cavenidsh in supermarkets anytime soon," said Randy Ploetz, a retired scientist from the University of Florida who studied tropical plant diseases.

While all sorts of bananas are grown around the world for domestic consumption, the ones shipped to places including the United States and the European Union are mostly Cavendishes. It may seem odd that the world banana market would hitch its fortunes to a single variety, but mass producing just one kind is a way to keep costs down, which also helps make bananas so widely available.

Bananas are also hard to breed, and finding varieties suited to global commerce isn't easy. In addition to being productive, Cav-endish plants yield bananas that can survive the trip from warm climates to far-flung supermarkets, without ripening too quickly.

Still, history has shown the risks of relying on a single banana variety. Not that long ago, the world market was ruled by anoth-er banana, the Gros Michel, aka the Big Mike. Experts say it was

even easier to ship than the Cavendish, and sweeter (though others contend it tasted similar). Either way, the Gros Michel was ravaged by the 1950s by an earlier strain of the disease now stalking the Cavendish.

This time, there's no obvious backup banana waiting in the wings to take over.

In Asian countries hit by the Tropical Race 4 disease, coping strategies have included planting less susceptible Cavendish vari-eties or moving to uninfected farmland, according to Ploetz. But those varieties aren't as productive and still eventually succumb to the fungus, which can survive in soil for decades. Growers will also eventually run out of uninfected land.

In Colombia, special measures being taken to stop the disease from spreading include sanitary controls at the entrance to plan-tations and roadblocks where trucks traveling between banana farms and ports are disinfected by government workers in scrubs and rubber boots.

The fungus travels on small particles of soil that can stick to truck tires, farm equipment or workers' shoes. And in Colom-bia, farmers fear that thieves who sneak into plantations to steal bananas could accidentally spread the disease. Some farms in Colombia are only lightly guarded and are separated from inter-state roads by small fences. The situation has prompted police and Colombia's military to step up presence around banana plantations since the disease was detected.

"We are trying to make people understand that stealing bananas nowadays can have greater repercussions," said Fran-cisco Zuniga, the president of Asbama, a Colombian banana farmers association.

So far, the fungus has been detected on six farms in Colom-bia. All are located in La Guajira, a province near the border with Venezuela. Officials say the affected area is still small at 490 acres (200 hectares), and is not making a dent on the country's exports. But there are concerns that the arrival of the disease will change Colombia's banana industry forever, forcing farms and

the government to spend more on sanitary measures.In La Guajira, officials have uprooted plants where the fungus

has been detected and covered the soil with black plastic sheets that raise the temperatures to levels that could stop the disease from spreading. Healthy plants within a 60 foot (20 meter) radius of the affected areas are also killed with chemicals as a preventive measure.

"We will continue to work towards stopping this disease from spreading to the rest of Colombia," Agriculture Minister Andres Valencia told The Associated Press during a visit to La Guajira. "But eventually we have to make the transition to other varieties of banana that will resist this disease."

Gert Kema, a plant scientist who studies bananas, also said the industry needs to diversify. He said there are many types of tomatoes and peppers, and that bananas should be no different.

"We have collectively accepted that we have just one banana," Kema said.

Banana diversity means higher costs, however, and it's not clear that people would be willing to pay more for the fruit.

Another challenge is that the fungus is lethal to a wide array of bananas. That's also a problem for places where starchier, cooked bananas are a food staple, including some countries in Africa and Latin America.

But even with the disease's appearance in Colombia, banana companies say there's no need to panic. Whether the solution is a new breed or a genetically modified banana, the new option will likely look and taste a lot like the Cavendish.

For now, government and industry officials say they're taking security measures to contain the fungus wherever it appears.

"We can significantly slow the spread and have decades more of the Cavendish," said Caoimhe Buckley, a spokeswoman for Fyffes, a major banana exporter based in Ireland.

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