It started as an inkling. A morsel of an idea. Farfetched? Perhaps. But it percolated. Quickly.
Villanova men’s basketball coach Kevin Willard joined his former agent, Jordan Bazant, for a drink at Campagnola on New York City’s Upper West Side during last year’s Big East spring meetings.
As they chatted over a glass of wine, Bazant, now FOX Sports’ EVP of business development and media, pitched an idea that had simmered at the network’s Los Angeles headquarters:
What if Villanova and Notre Dame opened the basketball season in Rome?
“You’re nuts,” Willard quipped at the time. “You think it would get good ratings?”
“I think it would get great ratings,” Bazant assured.
“Alright, I’m in,” Willard declared.
Back on campus, the pitch persisted.
Villanova athletics director Eric Roedl had just landed in Chicago for a booster event as white smoke emanated from the Sistine Chapel. The group bustled. Celebrations began.
Cardinal Robert Prevost, a Villanova graduate, had been elected the first American Pope.
Pope Leo XIV is a graduate of Villanova. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
The wheels started spinning.
“Villanova-NDBB in Vatican City??!!” read Roedl’s text to OnLocation executive VP John Anthony, who has spent years running college sports events overseas.
“He responded back immediately,” Roedl recounted. “Like, ‘Absolutely, let’s find a way to do this.’”
The next step was getting the schools on board.
“It seemed like a good idea, and we took it right to Villanova,” Bazant told me. “They were interested right away, because of a strong affiliation, not just through Pope Leo, but also the Augustinian Church.”
Back at FOX Sports’ headquarters in Los Angeles, longtime college basketball producer Steve Scheer developed a presentation for senior leadership at the network. When that presentation was brought to Villanova, “they dove right in,” added Bazant.
Almost 18 months from the inception of an idea, the men’s and women’s basketball teams at Villanova and Notre Dame are in Rome this week to begin their 2026-27 seasons in the Eternal City Tip-Off. The men’s game will tip off at 9:30 am ET Sunday on FOX, while the women’s game will follow on FS1.
A mass in St. Peter’s Basilica is on the docket. An audience with Pope Leo is scheduled. Eventually, a pair of basketball games will be played. That’s far from the only thing on the minds of those involved.
“I don’t know if, sitting here in South Bend, Indiana on Tuesday, I even realize what the rest of this week is going to look like, or how special it’s going to be,” Notre Dame men’s basketball coach Micah Shrewsberry told me. “… The things that are gonna happen there when you actually take the moment to think about what it is and what’s possible, it’s like, ‘Wow, that is as unique and special as it gets.’”
Pitching The Pope On College Basketball
There is no simple way to pitch a Pope.
The months following Pope Leo’s election included a winding game of telephone that weaved from the FOX Studio Lots in Los Angeles, to the campuses in South Bend and Philadelphia, across the Atlantic Ocean and over to Rome, where dignitaries from Villanova and Notre Dame helped run point in working with the Vatican on potential dates.
“It took us almost a year to announce, to get signatures that we knew we could go public with it,” Anthony told me. “Economics are extremely challenging. Operationally, executing a basketball game is very challenging. It’s doable; it just takes a lot of people and conversations and efforts.”
The ties between the papacy and Villanova run deep.
Pope Leo graduated from the school in 1977, coinciding as an undergrad with now Villanova President Rev. Peter Donohue. The Pope is a member of the Augustinian Order, the religious order that helped found the school over a century ago and maintains deep ties to the university.
There are also his sports-inclined leanings.
Pope Leo is fanatical about his hometown Chicago White Sox, having grown up on the South Side of the city. Those working to bring the Wildcats to Rome figured an international sporting event involving his alma mater might be of interest to the highest ranking dignitary in the Catholic faith.
Pope Leo XIV is a fanatic fan of the Chicago White Sox. (Photo by FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP via Getty Images)
“It’s something that really transcends sport, given our Augustinian mission here at Villanova and the opportunity to bring the Villanova community to the Vatican and celebrate our mission with Pope Leo,” Roedl said. “To do it through sport with basketball being as important a part of the DNA and culture of Villanova, it’s going to be pretty special.”
As those at the highest rungs of administration at Villanova and Notre Dame — including Donohue and Notre Dame President Rev. Robert Dowd — counseled with the Vatican about dates, OnLocation and Players Era were brought in alongside FOX to help run the game itself.
OnLocation would be responsible for ticket packages that blended premium seating, special events in Vatican City and guided tours. Players Era would handle the operational side of the venue — the Palazzo dello Sport — along with sponsorships and any financial ties to the game. FOX Sports would oversee the broadcast.
“You only get a chance to do history once,” Players Era co-founder Ian Orefice told me. “To bring these two teams there for the first time in history, in partnership with the Vatican and the Pope is truly just a once in a lifetime opportunity as a producer and as a sports fan.”
There was also the matter of sorting through the machinations of the NCAA itself.
College sports have long sought audiences overseas. Anthony has been intimately involved in the annual Aer Lingus College Football Classic. The Pac-12 previously sent teams to China to play exhibition games in the 2010s.
A regular-season college basketball game — and one that would open the season — taking place overseas, however, was another added logistic, given the college basketball season is actually scheduled to begin on Monday.
Such changes to the calendar required a waiver process through the NCAA and its men’s and women’s basketball oversight committees. The Big East and ACC were each intimately involved in the requests, passing along any and all information they could to NCAA HQ in Indianapolis.
It would take months before receiving a final verdict.
“It took a little while to get that through the NCAA system,” former Big East commissioner Val Ackerman conceded. “… Very happy that people understood the unique nature of this opportunity because schools play overseas all the time. This, we thought, was really different. This was out of the box.”
A Celebration Of Faith, Culture And Basketball
Shrewsberry is a regular on the AAU Nike Elite Youth Basketball League circuit, crossing paths with coaches across the country in hunting the nation’s top recruits. The process can be taxing, overwrought and intense. Everyone is competitive.
Chats with other coaches and colleagues can help soften the mood.
An exchange along the sidelines in Memphis last spring with Willard still resonates.
“Hey, man,” Willard said at the time. “We’re gonna play in Rome.”
“It seemed like forever ago that we were talking about it,” Shrewsberry said this week. “And now it’s here.”
Notre Dame head coach Micah Shrewsberry is 41-56 in three years as the program’s head coach. (Photo by Matt Kelley/Getty Images)
There is no obvious playbook for the coming days.
Villanova and Notre Dame were slated to leave for Rome in the middle of this week. Their trips will include their share of cultural exchanges and activities before playing the first games of their respective seasons.
Athletes will tour the Colosseum, participate in an Italian cooking class and take part in the aforementioned mass at St. Peter’s Basilica. The schools are also slated to co-host a Sports and Spirituality presentation at the Patristic Institute Augustinianum.
Fans, too, will have their chances to congregate.
Villanova is hosting a welcome event on Friday, while Notre Dame has a watch party on the docket for the Fighting Irish football game on Saturday — a noon kickoff in the United States, or 5 p.m. Rome time.
“My goal is for them 10 years from now is to sit back and be like, ‘What an unbelievable experience I had to play in Rome,’” Willard told me. “To have a mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, to have those opportunities, is really what I’m hoping for. Kids now, at this age, they’re excited to go to Rome. I just don’t think they understand the experience they’re going to have yet.”
Kevin Willard went 29-9 in his first season as Villanova’s head coach. (Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images)
Basketball runs deep in Europe. Professional leagues are über popular with local fan bases. The NBA has inclinations of expanding its footprint to the continent.
A game like Saturday’s also helps.
“I think the actual sport of American football or basketball, basketball is a much more mature market,” Bazant said of the appeal of basketball in Europe. “American football is getting to be more mature, like when it first started going there with the NFL. It’s still kind of a novelty. You’re going because it’s an event. … Basketball is different because it’s a much more mature audience.”
The hope is this week won’t be a one-off. Those involved would love to open the college basketball season overseas or in a standardized format moving forward.
Getting the Pope involved on an annual basis? That might be a stiffer task.
“This is going to be the most historic and epic celebration of sport and culture and history and faith imaginable,” Anthony said. “This is a once-in-once-in-an-eternity kind of event.”
