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Has anyone seen the renderings for the Arena-Aud renovation?

Cuttslam said:
Cowduck is 99.9% right on the money. It all has to be about the game day experience and the atmosphere inside the building. AA seating of 15000 is insane and unsustainable even in the great years.I wouldn't go over 10000 in seating capacity. I watched a few games the last couple of weeks that included Utah st (10200) Stanford(7400) Duke(9300) Gonzaga(6000) Murray st(8600) CSU(8745) Arizona st(10700) Which provided a fantastic game day experience on TV and I'm sure in person . I hope they end up gutting that place(AA) it is not a good fit for Wyoming athletics. I would also move the students to the TV side right in the middle and move the band to the end of one of the goals. I would also sell the naming rights to the new arena. I always liked Hell's Half Acre Arena at 7220.
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I guess you never went to the Wyoming-Utah game (16,000) or Wyoming-BYU (15,218), or Wyoming-Clemson (15,028). That was True Gameday experience.
Gut it? Are you serious? Why don't we just knock the capacity down to 5,000...Then we can sellout or almost sellout even in the Schroyer type years. That would give you a great gameday experience!
War Memorial: Wyo-CSU (97) 34,745, Great gameday experience. Wyo-AFA (96) 32,009 great gameday experience, Wyo-BYU (90) 34,210. All great gamedays! Now we get to experience:
Wyo-Virginia 31,117, Wyo-Texas 30,000, Wyo-BSU 29,086, Wyo-Nebraska 32,617. No more, but yes less. I guess if we want an adequate gameday experience for football we could knock our capacity down to 23,000, then we sellout almost every game to have a great gameday experience.

Yup, you guys are right, Drop capacity create Gameday experience. :brick:
 
If you all really want to drop capacity to create gameday experience, Why don't we just update and renovate The Fieldhouse and move back in to it's 9,000 seat stature. Perfect for everyone!
You all know there was a reason we went from a 9,000 seat fieldhouse to a new 15,000 seat arena right? Get over yourselves.
 
Think about this: Our most successful season in the last 25 years was 2001-2002. We drew just a shade under 12,000 people per game that year in the seven conference games. You can guess what the average looks like for the non-con games. And that number is inflated somewhat by the conference-championship-on-the-line, end-of-regular-season, on-a-Saturday Utah game, which was the only sellout. No other game drew more than 13,000-ish and there were a couple below 10,000. And people are griping about the possibility of losing 2000-3000 seats out of the AA in 2012? Please.

kansascowboy says "there was a reason we went from a 9,000 seat fieldhouse to a new 15,000 seat arena." To that I say, if we were to pretend we never built the AA and were playing in the fieldhouse right now, we wouldn't make that decision again. Guarantee it. Renovating the fieldhouse would actually make a ton of sense in today's economy and culture.

But seriously, no one has much of an answer for the argument that there are dozens of examples of basketball programs with much more successful traditions and larger fanbases that are located in bigger metropolitan areas than ours with smaller arenas, many of which have been built or extensively renovated recently. I would love for someone to explain how exactly bigger arenas means a better basketball program.

Oregon had a similar basketball history to Wyoming until the last decade, when they went to three Elite Eights. They have bottomless pockets thanks to Nike, which means not only they could build whatever building they wanted but also undoubtedly spared no expense in hiring experts to analyze their market situation in order to optimize revenue when building a new arena. They have an enrollment roughly double Wyoming's and have a metropolitan area 5 times the size of Laramie + Cheyenne, which is a super dedicated college-town like atmosphere (seriously, I went to school there for three years, the town revolves around that school, period), plus all of the fans less than two hours away in Portland.

They built an arena with a capacity of about 12,300.

And people here are acting like its some reflection on our collective dick sizes when our own athletic department is considering reducing the capacity of our 15,000 seat arena now, in 2012. Time to get over ourselves.
 
Cowduck said:
I don't necessarily agree that reducing the capacity is "thinking small." I think the trend overall in indoor arenas is smaller and more intimate, both because attendance trends for these events nationwide is going down and because there is more emphasis on creating a better experience for the fan and increasing demand for the tickets. The brand new arena at the University of Oregon only seats a bit over 12,000. (I'll bracket my feelings about the blasphemy of abandoning McArthur Court, which was so fucking badass). You would think that if any school was going to go big or go home on a new basketball arena it would be Oregon, with bottomless pockets and designs on establishing itself as a "big time" athletic program. But they kept it relatively small, with an emphasis on recreating an intimate atmosphere. (Never mind they already had the best, most intimate arena with the most character west of the Mississippi save for maybe Phog Allen, but whatever.)

The AA is a relic of a different time in arena construction philosophy - big, utilitarian, and reflective of a culture when people had less shit to do so you could expect to routinely draw crowds big enough to justify the size. I ranted a while ago about the piss poor attendance for a critical game in a successful season and I stand behind those statements, but at the same time we have to acknowledge that there is all kinds of crap competing for people's attention that didn't exist in the early 80's. Now, I love that place and it is home to my favorite memories attending sporting events, and when you pack them in there is no place like it. But if a meteor leveled the AA tomorrow and we had to hire architects to start over from scratch building a basketball arena, I guarantee that their recommendation would probably be to build something with a max capacity of maybe 10-11k at the most, and our marketing department would hire consultants to discuss ways to enhance the fan experience at games, and I would heartily agree with that.

In 2012, "big time" college athletics does not necessarily correlate with "big arenas." Especially in basketball, when you have a higher volume of games (which reduces scarcity of your product) and a fair amount of them are on weeknights. I think with the way our culture is changing, we have to start being a little progressive in our thinking when it comes to ways to maximizing the attractiveness of the in-game experience.

Consider Gonzaga's arena built in 2004 - they were riding the wave of national popularity based on consistent success, they are located in a metropolitan area with three times the population of Laramie and Cheyenne combined, and you would have to say that they are a "big time" basketball program despite the fact that they play in the WCC. And the new Kennel seats 6,000 (old one sat 4,000, for reference). They sell out every game and would probably do so if that arena were double the size. Food for thought.

There was a Bill Simmons podcast a few months ago when he had the CEO of TicketBastard as his guest, and they discussed this stuff extensively. I recommend a listen.
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I couldn't have said it better myself.
 
In 2004, Stanford (a big enrollment, bottomless pocket, huge metro-area, big-time basketball tradition school) decided to renovate Maples Pavilion, which has a max capacity of about 7,400, instead of building a new arena. But by all means, we should insist on maintaining 15,000 plus capacity solely because we've managed to sell it out a handful of times in the last 25 years. The bottom line is that it doesn't make sense to make economic decisions based on outlier data that doesn't account for changes in market trends.
 
kansasCowboy said:
Cuttslam said:
Cowduck is 99.9% right on the money. It all has to be about the game day experience and the atmosphere inside the building. AA seating of 15000 is insane and unsustainable even in the great years.I wouldn't go over 10000 in seating capacity. I watched a few games the last couple of weeks that included Utah st (10200) Stanford(7400) Duke(9300) Gonzaga(6000) Murray st(8600) CSU(8745) Arizona st(10700) Which provided a fantastic game day experience on TV and I'm sure in person . I hope they end up gutting that place(AA) it is not a good fit for Wyoming athletics. I would also move the students to the TV side right in the middle and move the band to the end of one of the goals. I would also sell the naming rights to the new arena. I always liked Hell's Half Acre Arena at 7220.
Click to expand...

I guess you never went to the Wyoming-Utah game (16,000) or Wyoming-BYU (15,218), or Wyoming-Clemson (15,028). That was True Gameday experience.
Gut it? Are you serious? Why don't we just knock the capacity down to 5,000...Then we can sellout or almost sellout even in the Schroyer type years. That would give you a great gameday experience!
War Memorial: Wyo-CSU (97) 34,745, Great gameday experience. Wyo-AFA (96) 32,009 great gameday experience, Wyo-BYU (90) 34,210. All great gamedays! Now we get to experience:
Wyo-Virginia 31,117, Wyo-Texas 30,000, Wyo-BSU 29,086, Wyo-Nebraska 32,617. No more, but yes less. I guess if we want an adequate gameday experience for football we could knock our capacity down to 23,000, then we sellout almost every game to have a great gameday experience.

Yup, you guys are right, Drop capacity create Gameday experience. :brick:
Click to expand...
First of all I've been to many a game in the AA and played a few there to. I'll go as far as saying I go to more Cowboy games in Laramie than most of the people living in Wyoming do. It's not a big deal I'm only a 900-1000 miles away. I have two teams in this world that I'm a fan of. The Wyoming Cowboys and a distant,distant second Arizona State Sundevils. I was at Texas, Boise, and the Nebraska game that you mentioned, and they were fabulous game day atmosphere's. In my opinion the WAR is just right at 30000. The thread was about the AA, and in my opinion it is not a good venue for WYO. In fact not only do I think a meteor hitting and destroying it would be a viable option or gutting it in a remodel, I could also argue that is has been a cancer that needs to be cut out on the basketball programs. 10000 would be a great start.
 
What Cuttslam and Cowduck said......


let's make the WAr 50K just in case we get really good or we have someone good come to town. Maybe the AA should be 20K because we sold 15K one time. 12-13K sounds perfect.

I'm telling you that having a sellout at 15K and 12K is no different except that for 99% of the games, 9K doesn't look so damn awful.
 
While I agree with McPeachy's feeling that there is a lot of small-time thinking in the UW athletic department, I don't think that this is an example at all.

Nobody is setting out with the intent of lowering capacity, but rather that is a casualty or trade-off of some of the other upgrades that are required. A 12-13k remodeled, state of the art A-A would be awesome for UW, the fans, and players. There are many, many examples of great college basketball atmospheres in arenas that size and smaller including some of the most storied and famous venues in college hoops.

The goal should be modernizing the arena and turning it into an attraction for fans and recruits. It's only attraction now is nostalgia for those of us that remember the good old days in the AA. If some capacity is lost in the process, I just don't see it as a big deal.
 
I don't know if any of you have read through this but it has some interesting budget information and facility upgrade info. Granted its a little old but still

http://www.uwyo.edu/acadaffairs/plans/athletics_white_paper.pdf
 
I've heard they are looking at shaving off some of the odd corners so they can have two full size courts adjacent to each other. If that's the case I hope they figure out a way to use bleachers to take the crowd straight to the courts edge.

I don't think reducing seating by a couple of grand is going to prevent our building from being any more intimidating then it has been. However, I do think that bringing the crowd closer to the court with bleachers could make the AA even louder.

If they are going to rotate it, I think they should put more of the student section closer to the court. They're the bread and butter of the crowd and should be right in the middle of it.

I prefer the option of keeping the court how it is and bringing the crowd closer to the court. Then we could build a seperate practice facility that could double as a 3-5 thousand seat arena for women's basketball and wrestling.
 
Personally, mixed feelings on taking out a couple thousand seats.
Pros.
When we have less than 15,000 it doesn't look as bad when we have say, 7000-8000.
Club suites would add additional income.
AA needs to be modernized.

Cons.
With only 7500 against UNLV, we sounded like 17,000. Imagine what we would sound like with over 15,000 constantly (it needs a few years winning to at least average 10,000 a game).
More people would be able to come to the games.
Shrinking the AA gives me a bad feeling. We already had the smallest stadium in the MWC in football, but when we shrunk it, the other fanbases, and even a bunch of sports journalists/experts gave us a lot of flak for it. In basketball though, we're one of the largest in the West. 12,000-13,000 isn't bad, but most programs on the rise should be thinking about expanding rather than down-sizing.

I see it for both sides, so, I'm a bit torn on it.
 
Cuttslam said:
I wouldn't go over 10000 in seating capacity. I watched a few games the last couple of weeks that included Utah st (10200) Stanford(7400) Duke(9300) Gonzaga(6000) Murray st(8600) CSU(8745) Arizona st(10700) Which provided a fantastic game day experience on TV and I'm sure in person . I hope they end up gutting that place(AA) it is not a good fit for Wyoming athletics. I would also move the students to the TV side right in the middle and move the band to the end of one of the goals. I would also sell the naming rights to the new arena.
Click to expand...

We mock CSU's Mobey Gym but now we want to remove 1/3 of our seating so that we can more in line with CSU and Air Force? To me, we must all shut up about CSU, Idaho, the Dakota schools and any other D1AA program now that the legislature has decided that downsizing the University's facilities is more important to the future of the state than dealing with deteriorating transportation infrastructure.

In Wyoming, given that most alumni and potential suite-buying businesses must be located out of state and no closer than Denver, we really think the secret to improving attendance and fan interest is to minimize the capacity so that ticket prices double? For most of U.W.'s alumni, they must choose between either a high-paying job upon graduation or remaining in Wyoming. It is rare to find someone who gets to have both at once.

Also, as I pointed out earlier, there is usually such wide disparity among crowd sizes in the high average attendance years that significantly reducing capacity to a level that could still hold the average attendance is going to hurt attendance. We get our averages up by getting really good crowds for two or three big games. I do not expect those people would buy tickets and travel to different games where seats are available if we significantly reduce the size of the arena.

I could swallow 12,500-13,500 but would not like it. To me, eliminating 1/3 of the capacity so that we are more like CSU and other mid-majors that play in oversize gyms is incompetence and little more than an attempt to harm the university with a sugar coating. The place has held over 16,000 people. Now some are arguing is should be downsized to a maximum capacity that is closer to 8,000 than it is to 12,000. Do I hear the Big Sky calling our name? Do I see the powers-that-be looking longingly to Weber State and Northern Colorado as replacements for CSU and BYU on our schedule?

On a related note, how many people attended the speech by Barak Obama that was given at the A-A for years ago? What about the Gorbachev speech that was held there?

Finally, I refuse to accept the notion that average attendance during 2002-03 was "inflated somewhat by the conference-championship-on-the-line, end-of-regular-season, on-a-Saturday Utah game." That season reflects where the Wyoming basketball program is supposed to be. The Pokes are supposed to be playing for the conference championship on the last weekend of the season. The A-A was built during an era when the Cowboys were in the hunt for WAC championships and the A-A still is sized for a good program, not a mediocre to poor one like we have suffered through since Marc Bailey graduated. Remember, that last good season was only a mere 10 years ago.
 
There's no way this renovation would make us lose 1/3rd of our seating. They are adding a club area but it sounds like its going to be out of the way and not effect seating too much. They will expand the court but listening to Burman on the radio he said there will be bleachers added on gamedays which will get people closer to the action and in my opinion would add a few more seats to offset the loss of the other seats.
 
I hope that we don't lose a third of the seating, but if they are talking about 10,000 capacity (or less) then it is 1/3 of the seating that will be gone.

Even if it makes sense to the powers that be, it will sadden me when I can no longer point out that Wyoming's arena, which sells out for the biggest games during good years, dwarfs the facilities that the marquee national programs have. This is something that I do boast about more than I should. It is fun to watch East Coast types that have been talking trash about us hesitate when they find out that their program cannot hope to draw the kind of crowds that I have been a part of for Wyoming in the A-A.

Maybe the golden years really are behind us and we will be shooting to achieve and sustain a lower level and stature than we once had?

Maybe the incoming fans that discuss their new conference home over on the MW fan board are right to envision a future conference reconfiguration that includes CSU and New Mexico but not Wyoming with its shrinking facilities and declining fan base?
 
Every plan I've read states that seating will be reduced by 2000-3000, so it's not going to put us anywhere near 10,000. We'll still have 12,500 seats.
 
WyoExpat said:
I hope that we don't lose a third of the seating, but if they are talking about 10,000 capacity (or less) then it is 1/3 of the seating that will be gone.

Even if it makes sense to the powers that be, it will sadden me when I can no longer point out that Wyoming's arena, which sells out for the biggest games during good years, dwarfs the facilities that the marquee national programs have. This is something that I do boast about more than I should. It is fun to watch East Coast types that have been talking trash about us hesitate when they find out that their program cannot hope to draw the kind of crowds that I have been a part of for Wyoming in the A-A.

Maybe the golden years really are behind us and we will be shooting to achieve and sustain a lower level and stature than we once had?

Maybe the incoming fans that discuss their new conference home over on the MW fan board are right to envision a future conference reconfiguration that includes CSU and New Mexico but not Wyoming with its shrinking facilities and declining fan base?
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I'm still waiting for the actual, logical reasoning behind the sentiment that big arena = big time basketball. I'm not sure that has ever been a reality but it sure isn't in 2012. Cameron Indoor Stadium holds fewer than 10,000 people. I'm sure you've heard of the team that plays there.

And what "golden years" saw Wyoming selling out the AA on a consistent basis? Again, I refer you to the fact that in our best season of the last 25 years, we sold out the AA exactly once. We didn't draw more than a shade over 13k for any other game that season. The AA has hosted crowds bigger than 10,000 people 71 times, according to the UW athletics website. That's an average of a little over twice a year. We've had fifteen sellouts in the history of the building. Fifteen! And not all of those were even for men's basketball games. What am I missing?

I feel like the "keep the seating capacity big" crowd are long on (misguided, in my opinion) sentiment and short on logic and data. Basically the argument I am hearing is, "Man, it was so awesome that one time we had 16,000 for the Utah game." Well, yeah. I was at that game and I rushed the court and I watched Josh Davis et. al. cut down the nets and all that. It was awesome. But it would have still been awesome with 12-13,000 people in the building, too. And you don't base long term economic decisions on outlier data, especially when economic and cultural trends are factored in.
 
The two main reasons they're doing this are:

1. Recruiting. Nice new buildings with luxury boxes and club seating are what kids want to see. Recruits don't want to play in 30 year old arenas.

2. Money. Even with less seats we will be able to add half a million to our athletics budget. Matched by the state that's 1 million dollar bump that can be used to RETAIN QUALITY COACHES.

I think there are bigger needs in our athletics department including coaching salaries, recruiting budgets, and scheduling money. Having 3000 extra empty seats for 95 percent of our home games doesn't add anything.
 
Cowboy Junky said:
Every plan I've read states that seating will be reduced by 2000-3000, so it's not going to put us anywhere near 10,000. We'll still have 12,500 seats.
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What was the original seating? Prior to that stupid fucking clapping hand scoreboard (when the AA had 2 large scoreboards mounted above the seats, that faced eachother)? 16K and change? For some reason, I can't find the info. So, lets just say, 16,000 to 12,000...a 25% decrease in seating capacity.

My point, and fear, (for the 2 major revenue sports at UW)...everyone else is growing and building bigger around us, and we want to shrink things. And frankly, we (they) have done a good job of shrinking both the AA (scoreboard, and poor ADA planning) and the War (which now seats 15% less than it did in 1988).

Smalltime. It is the mentality at UW right now, and it blows ass. It is almost like they are saying behind closed doors up there..."hey let's dummy this fucker down, we won't have to work as hard."
 
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