He has been crunching the numbers for months. The economy is a factor for almost everyone these days, including Bill Ingram.

Ingram has been a hard-working circulation manager for 18 years at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and he’s the founder of The Real Deal on the Hill, one of the largest summer basketball tournaments in the country.

Last April, the tournament maxed out at 268 teams with 281 on the waiting list.

There simply were no more available gyms in Northwest Arkansas.

To continue to grow, the tournament needed to move, but that was something Ingram had refused to think about until the completion of his fourth year.

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Saying such a move would not be an easy decision for Ingram is a major understatement, but there were at least two other extenuating circumstances at play in addition to not being able to increase the number of teams.

Of the 141 volunteers 123 were from central Arkansas Hotels, food and transportation had to be provided for them.

It was expensive, and the bottom line was that was money being spent on something other than the young people in the Arkansas Hawks AAA program.

Plus, Ingram spends two of his three weeks of vacation preparing for and putting on the tournament, and just so you know, he is one of those conscientious workers who takes his job seriously and puts it before his passion for basketball.

The other week of vacation, which was anything but a vacation, was spent with his teams at the Las Vegas Tournament.

That left him little time for his family.

No doubt a huge hurdle for moving the tournament to central Arkansas would be the relationship that has developed between Ingram and John Tyson, his primary sponsor. Considering all the respect Ingram has for Tyson, making that call would be tougher on Ingram than the day after the Real Deal ends each year. That’s when Ingram gets home at midnight and goes to work four hours later.

Any decision to move would not have anything to do with some real or imagined rivalry between the two parts of the state. Ingram graduated from the University of Arkansas and played football for the Razorbacks.

When he started the tournament, he went there first.

This was about a need for physical and fiscal resolution.

As of Tuesday, no official announcement had been made, but the city of Little Rock sent out a news release concerning the relocation of a basketball tournament to central Arkansas and that more than 250 teams could be involved.

It has to be The Real Deal on the Hill is about to become The Real Deal in the Rock.

More than likely, this afternoon we will learn that one of the most successful summer basketball tournaments in the country will be in full swing from April 17-19 in central Arkansas Which will be a relief for some of the teams who want to participate but have found the travel too expensive.

No doubt Northwest Arkansas is going to continue to prosper and grow — although like everyone else, the economy is a hurdle for it, too — but last April, 15 teams had to fly into Little Rock and rent vans and drive to Fayetteville.

The words of Team Breakdown had to have echoed in Ingram’s head, too.

It won The Real Deal on the Hill, as well as the AAU national championship in Orlando, Fla., but that Sunday in April it arrived at the airport just in time to see the doors shut on their plane at 5: 20 p.m.

There was not another flight until the next day, and the tickets had to be changed at a cost of $ 150 each, plus another night in a hotel for the party of 12.

They told Ingram they would not be back.

And that he needed to help pay, which he did.

But because of economics and physical demands, it appears an announcement will be made this afternoon that The Real Deal in the Rock is moving to central Arkansas.

Only time will tell what the area does with this great opportunity.