I agree about the illuse of the space in the Dome. Ever since it was built I and others wondered why oh why it was not made into a fan friendly place for basketball. As is, it is not very good for basketball. It is all we have though and is all we will have for some time to come I guess. I can only wonder why the floor seating is pulled back so far from the court. When I watch Duke play and see those fans sitting literally within a few feet of the floor I think what must be going through the minds of the people who run Memorial Center. The stands appear to be twenty feet or more from the court and it is as if they do not want a home court advantage from the fans standpoint. That floor seating is something they could do right now that would make it a better place.

Need to be careful with a joint facility, it can be tough to manage. Do you build a facility that will just house basketball, or would it be multi-use and be able to host concerts and other things like heaven forbid exhibition hockey?

Chattanooga wrestled with this issue for years. UTC and both city and county governments were not up to the task of managing Finley Staduim (the replacment for Chamberlain Stadium). They managed to land the 1AA Championship game, but were in danger of losing it because or problems with the stadium, turf problems, etc. They finally hired Frank Burke, the owner of the Chattanooga Lookouts (our AA baseball team), and he has done a spectacular job. He keeps up the stadium and basically scoops his profit off of concessions I believe.

Granted an Arena would not have the wear and tear of an outdoor stadium, but it still takes someone or some entity to take ownership and responsibility to make sure that it's run right, schedule properly and kept up. Educators and small town Universities don't seem to have that capability.

If we could bring in ONE exhibition hockey game in the freakin' SPHL I would sacrifice the entire ETSU athletic department for it.

Get your priorities in order, 84.

This JC article says that 8,000 can now attend concerts in the dome. I thought the most for any event was around 6,500. Has this changed, or does anyone actually know what the maximum is allowed by the fire marshal rules???

Underwood Concert

All I know is they say it is okay to have 8,000 in that place for a concert but they say they can't have more than 6,000 for a basketball game.

If that's what the law is, then the law needs to be changed. Clearly it is far more unsafe for a concert to be held in the place with thousands on the floor than 12,000 sitting in seats.

I have long argued that it would be far safer for a fire to catch hold in the dome than it would in Thompson Bowling Arena...That said if a disaster strikes at any such place...you're probably just screwed. Oh well...that's life.

It's 8,000 because they can sit more people on the floor. Ive actually heard that ETSU could sit more people for basketball games on the floor of the arena. It's just the stands that are capped off.

I guess we can start worrying about that when we start selling out games.