sports head basketball nearly 9000 games

Dozens of programs are playing in barns that are too big. But if there was a magic wand that could change things, here's an introductory list of schools with venues well north of 12,000-seat capacity that would be SO MUCH better off playing in a barn that held somewhere closer to 9,000 people. And there are some arenas that still need to exist for many events outside of basketball games. Keep in mind that many schools don't have the funding nor the footprint or geographic luxury of tearing down one arena to build another. For all others, the 7,000-9,500 range is the ideal size in an era when attendance at sporting events across the country has become more challenging. There are maybe two dozen Division I schools that have proven they can consistently support and validate playing in arenas with a capacity of 12,000-plus.

For a power-conference program with a recent national championship, the decision to go smaller was. And the furthest seat from the court is nearly 60 feet closer than in the Ferrell Center. In fact, there are more seats closer to the court here than in Baylor's old joint. What seems obvious one week in is that the school has landed in the coveted territory of playing in an arena that feels intimidating for opponents but shouldn't suffer from swaths of empty seats. 14 Bears beat 18th-ranked BYU 81-72 in their second game in the new digs, which is tucked alongside the Brazos River in Waco. On Tuesday night, Baylor had its first big matchup in its new home. The twinkling-new Foster Pavilion wasn't ready in time for the start of the 2023-24 season, but in an interesting wrinkle, it did clear inspection for an in-season launch. Yet the school committed more than $210 million to build a new venue that would reduce capacity by 27%. A few years ago, Baylor University approved a move that will likely benefit its athletic department and uplift its basketball programs for decades: it put hundreds of millions of dollars into building a smaller basketball arena.Īt the time of the decision, the Ferrell Center had existed for barely more than 30 years.

Sports head basketball nearly 9000 games