Auburn’s arena

Just spent a bunch of money gutting and rebuilding the place 6 years ago, probably be awhile before more money is put aside for basketball.

Also, Aubie's new place is also multipurpose, their Gymnastics and Volleyball team share the place just like the O-Dome.

 

Yup another one of the poor decisions by Foley to pinch pennies and renovate the O'Dome as opposed to what Auburn did in building a dedicated Basketball facility. Unfortunately dropping millions of $$ into the renovation of the O'Dome was like putting lipstick on pig and now we are stuck with it for perhaps another generation. The O'Dome was great when it opened and served its purpose for a long time, but has been eclipsed by other facilities in the SEC for Basketball.

 

Auburn downsized their arena compared to their old one. Main reason was they couldn’t come close to filling it.

 

I’d put auburns atmosphere first in the league for a big game.

 

Easily

 

Even with the renovation the O'Dome has the ability to have fans close to the floor. The addition of the club on the sideline "alumni" side was great for fund raising but bad for creating atmosphere. And the reworking of the baselines took fans a bit further from the floor.

I liked the atmosphere before the renovation.

 

I drove round trip to Auburn from Gainesville for game during the 2014 season. Walked up to the ticket office and bought tickets where the parents of UF players were seated, so decent but not great seats.

Even though the game was close it was like being at a wake.

Of course the Gators won because we didn't lose any conference games that year.

Now it is crazy because Auburn is having a great season and is eligible for the post season in spite of being caught cheating.

Maybe they were also as loud when Charles Barkley played there. Didn't Sir Charles admit that he got paid to play there?

 

Those generally fit within the framework of basketball. The issue is that the O’Dome was built with a track and swimming facility. Renovating the O’Dome was a mistake, IMO. We could get a decent atmosphere because of the quality of the team, but it’s never going to be a great spectator venue because of its structure. Problem is we haven’t gone through the necessary steps of moving swimming and gymnastics practice into new facilities. Hopefully it’s part of our long term planning now.

 

Flip the cameras..create an illusion that the place is rocking until the place is rocking. Also need the camera sound close to where the roadies are to pick up the sound better. But what do I know. Oh and Auburm has their camera showing the student side, not the alumni side FYI.

 

I am interested to see what kind of atmosphere they get in Texas’ new arena. It will seat 10K for basketball most of the time, but expandable to 15K for larger events. Something like that could make sense for us as such a large school.

 

But Gainesville is not a large city. Austin is.

 

Billy coaching in Alligator Alley would have been an expensive ticket.

 

The students are about the same distance away as before. It is baseline fans that got moved back to put "press rows" in. That was to make way for really expensive court side seats where there used to be press.

If Auburn students at 10x closer they would be on the court.

Now my rant about student seating.

They used to have to camp out and now I see the same students sitting in the same seats every game. The new way of doing this is not good for getting rabid fans down low.

 

Isn’t the annoying banging coming from the rowdy area?

 

But UF is a school of 50K+ students. We need an arena larger than what Auburn built since it serves more purposes than just basketball. I’m not saying we have to do exactly what Texas is doing, but that kind of flexibility is something that we should look at.