(02-16-2017 01:51 PM)Longhorn Wrote: (02-15-2017 06:26 PM)91Alum Wrote: A) I'd say we "deserve" a lot of things. A new building for the College of Business for starters. How about better living facilities for our students than the crap Village? Can we give a facelift to Eagle while we're at it? It's such an eyesore and it's right there in plain view of 81. Yech.
Would I like a new Convo? Sure. Do we need a new Convo? Not for where we appear to be for the foreseeable future. Serious questions: (i) who in the CAA has a better facility, and (ii) if we are not leaving the CAA, why exactly do we "deserve" better?
B) Other conferences can consider us all they want. We're not considering them. Hence the lack of a need to spend $88M so we can sell the same number of bball tickets we sell today, and maybe host a Travis Tritt concert and a tractor show now and then. We'd have an $88M facility and a $260K coach. We've done nothing on either side of the hoops program in terms of financial support to show we're actually committed to winning, which in my mind makes the new facility a vanity project pure and simple.
But what do I know?
To answer your last question first, apparently not much.
A major COB expansion is in the works, and it will address what is seen from I-81.
A tear-down and rebuild of the Village is coming. It's all part of the JMU Master Plan.
Also, a "new Convo" isn't what's being built, it's an arena.
Sure will be glad when the arena is built too so we can stop this bickering about it.
You really are insufferable. I am fully aware that all those things are "in the works" (except the Eagle facelift, which will not be addressed by the COB building to my knowledge). That's why I listed them. My question/concern is one of priorities. What are the more pressing needs for us as a University?
In my view, the "new arena" is the least of those needs. Here's some food for thought: in all of D1, a total of 13 new basketball arenas have been built since 2010. The vast majority of D1 arenas were built before 1982 (when Convo went up). It just doesn't seem like most schools view this as a huge priority for capital investment. Why do we?
Looking specifically at the CAA, the arenas are as follows (with capacity and year they were built):
Towson (SECU Arena) / 5,200 / 2013
Charleston (TD Arena) / 5,100 / 2008
Hofstra (Hofstra Arena) / 5,124 / 2000
Delaware (Carpenter Center) / 5,000 / 1992
JMU (Convocation Ctr) / 7,156 / 1982
UNCW (Trask Colosseum) / 5,500 / 1977
Drexel (Daskalakis Ctr) / 2,509 / 1974
W&M (Kaplan Arena) / 8,600 / 1971
Elon (Alumni Gym) / 1,585 / 1949
Northeastern (Matthews Arena) / 6,000 / 1910
The Convo has the second largest capacity, and is middle of the CAA pack in terms of age. I (and the vast majority of college administrations, it seems) see no reason at all to spend $88M on this non-issue.
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