There was a little controversy last weekend during the NCAA Tournament when two NFL stadiums — Ford Field in Detroit and Reliant Stadium in Houston — made their debuts as basketball venues. Both sites required raised floors that separated the action from the benches, hence the minor controversy. The raised floor was OK in the old University of Minnesota arena, but some critics howled that it wasn’t OK in the NCAA Tournament.

In the economic reality of sports today, giant NFL stadiums, sometimes publicly financed, have to double as something else. Basketball games, rock concerts and other events — Lambeau Field hosted an outdoor University of Wisconsin hockey game a couple years ago — are just a fact of life at NFL stadiums. At least baseball had the foresight to realize their stadiums don’t make good football venues and vice versa. Hopefully, when the next wave of NFL stadiums are built with multitasking in mind, the league, teams and architects will remember that the buildings are football venues first. The raised floor might have been obnoxious to some basketball fans, but bad sight lines will be more annoying for an NFL fan.