Rockin' in the NCAA: John Mellencamp to put on free Final Four concert

INDIANAPOLIS -- Growing up near Indiana University, John Mellencamp couldn't help but become a big college basketball fan. So big, in fact, that as part of the NCAA's Final Four weekend here he's headlining a free outdoor concert Sunday -- one expected to draw up to 100,000 people.\nMellencamp, whose "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A." is featured in commercials promoting this year's NCAA tournament, agreed to perform largely because of his relationship with former IU president Myles Brand, who now heads the NCAA.\n"Myles asked me for the last three or four years ... and I've always had something scheduled, or you know -- something -- so Myles, kind of, he made the game in Indianapolis," said Mellencamp. "I can't say no!"\nBrand said he had been hoping for a few years to get Mellencamp, who donated $1.5 million to IU for an indoor sports facility, to play on Final Four weekend.\n"It always seemed like a good idea," he said. "And it turned out this year. It worked."\nIndianapolis' Monument Circle will be transformed into an outdoor concert arena, with massive video screens that will show the concert and the games between Florida and George Mason and Louisiana State and UCLA.\n"I've never really seen an event like this, other than Simon & Garfunkel playing in Central Park for free," Mellencamp said. "So I'm kind of excited about it."\nThe daylong event also will feature last year's American Idol winner, Carrie Underwood, rock group Collective Soul, pop singer Michelle Branch and teen R&B singer Chris Brown.\nBut it's Mellencamp, the small-town Indiana rocker who got his start 30 years ago as Johnny Cougar, who'll likely pack in the crowds.\nSunday's show will be the third stop on a 15-date Midwest and East Coast tour for Mellencamp. The tour is an offshoot of last year's Words & Music tour.\n"I didn't really intend to go out and play this spring at all," he told The Associated Press. "But when this NCAA thing came up a couple months ago, I said, `Look, if we're gonna have to go to all the trouble of rehearsing, just book us more shows.'"\nThe concert and tour will keep Mellencamp busy into April. Then he'll turn his focus to his first new album in four years and finding a director for the Broadway musical he and horror mogul Stephen King collaborated on.\nIt's a long way from the days when he was panned as the "poor man's Bruce Springsteen."\n"I'm 54 years old and feel every minute of it," said Mellencamp, who had a heart attack in 1994. "But I'm still smoking, and my attention span's still real short, so I guess not much has changed"