MINNEAPOLIS — Separated by about 1,000 miles and decades of fragmentation, the N.C.A.A. will stage an eight-team, four-day, two-city carnival of college basketball starting on Friday.

It is the way it has always been for Final Fours. And, despite all of the changes after last year’s uproar over inequities between the N.C.A.A.’s men’s and women’s tournaments, do not expect that approach to shift for at least a decade.

The decision, made over the winter after deliberations by a series of N.C.A.A. committees, defied a recommendation in August by a law firm that the association hired to examine its approach to championship events. But it was also in keeping with a longstanding reluctance within the college sports industry to bring the men’s and women’s events closer together geographically.

“Every coach that I’ve talked to that’s participated in the Final Four — and I’ve talked to quite a few after the report came out — not a one said we should have both Final Fours at the same place,” said Geno Auriemma, the Connecticut coach who has the Huskies in their 14th consecutive Final Four.

Auriemma’s team, along with Louisville, Stanford and South Carolina, will play semifinals in Minneapolis on Friday, with the championship game scheduled for Sunday. The men’s Final Four, which will be held in New Orleans on Saturday, will include Duke, Kansas, North Carolina and Villanova. The winners will advance to Monday’s title matchup.

With an exception in 1989, when Seattle hosted the men and nearby Tacoma, Wash., was the site of the women’s Final Four, the semifinal and championship events have been far apart since the women’s tournament debuted 40 years ago.

But the notion of merging the slate of games and turning a single city into an emporium of college basketball each spring, as tennis has done with Grand Slam events, has percolated over the years, most notably in a 2013 white paper about women’s basketball written for the N.C.A.A. by Val Ackerman, now the commissioner of the Big East Conference.

Ackerman said then that combining the events would potentially “create an unparalleled college basketball showcase that would bring together the best players and coaches in both sports and, importantly, allow the women’s tournament to avail itself of the presence of sponsors, media representatives and important guests who typically bypass” the women’s event in favor of the men’s Final Four. She acknowledged two significant perils: the logistical challenges of such a large event and the possibility that the women’s event would still be overshadowed by the men’s tournament.

The idea gained new currency in August when a law firm led by Roberta A. Kaplan issued a report that concluded that the N.C.A.A. had long prioritized the men’s tournament and its revenues. Bringing the men’s and women’s events to the same city, the report asserted, would “ensure that the student-athlete experience at the men’s and women’s championships is more equitable.”

It also argued that there was “no realistic way to obtain the same level of corporate sponsorship and promotional synergies at a separate women’s championship in a separate city,” given the N.C.A.A.’s assorted contractual arrangements, and said that the “overwhelming majority” of women’s players it surveyed about the possibility of a blended site supported the concept. The investigators urged that the N.C.A.A. combine the events by next year.

That prospect seemed far-fetched to some executives, particularly because the N.C.A.A. had already chosen host cities for both tournaments’ Final Fours through 2026. The decision in February, which N.C.A.A. officials said was unanimous, was for the events to remain separate through the next cycle of bidding to host the tournaments — making changes unlikely until at least 2032, which coincides with when the current men’s television rights contract will expire.

Executives said, though, that they were considering other possible adjustments, like holding the competitions on separate weekends, that could draw a larger spotlight onto women’s basketball. For now, though, N.C.A.A. leaders said they had been skeptical of upending decades of tradition.

“It was important at this time for the committee to see the results of the enhancements and the other investments that were being done in the championship and to really pay homage to or continue to respect what has been built around the women’s Final Four already with the fan base and otherwise,” Lynn Holzman, the N.C.A.A.’s vice president for women’s basketball, said Wednesday.

The women’s Final Four, she noted, has routinely drawn sellout crowds in the cities where it has been played in recent years, and N.C.A.A. officials are openly predicting similar fervor in Minneapolis for the games on Friday and Sunday.

The tournament’s schedule, Auriemma suggested on Tuesday, is ripe for change — a sentiment others have shared. That may prove to be an area where the N.C.A.A. will bend.

“Two teams played last night, Monday night, to go to the Final Four, and now we play Friday, and we fly out today,” he said on Tuesday. “The guys finished Sunday, and they get Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then they play Saturday. Why don’t you address things that actually help kids get ready to play their best basketball at the most important time of the year?”

The matter of where to play the Final Four, he suggested, was not “the most pressing issue that we have in this game.”

Whether he is right could become clearer in the next few years, when the N.C.A.A. will bargain over a new television rights deal for the women’s tournament. The Kaplan report suggested that increasing interest in the women’s tournament, including by combining the Final Fours, before those negotiations would strengthen the N.C.A.A.’s case for a greater payday that could then filter into women’s basketball.

The N.C.A.A. is expected to pull in at least $870 million from CBS and Turner for the rights to this year’s men’s tournament, while the women’s event is part of a multisport package for which ESPN is paying about $43.5 million this year.

The contract that covers the women’s tournament is scheduled to expire in August 2024.

By then, though, the Final Four sites through 2031 will have long since been chosen: They are expected to be announced this November.