we own our facilities just as much as you do....they're all publicly financed and publicly owned, it's just a matter of which way you look at it. we, the citizens of memphis and shelby county, are the tax paying, public owners of the Liberty Bowl and FedExForum. When the Pyramid was being built, the university had $33 million state-financed to build their own on-campus (south campus) facility, but were unfortunately talked into investing into the construction of the Pyramid instead of a new on-campus bball arena. I will say that Reliant Stadium is very nice but the Toyota Center is crap compared to the Forum, been to both, NBA arenas are were the comparisons end. With the current upgrades and renovations the Liberty Bowl is undergoing, it's going to be on par with any SEC, ACC, Big East, etc. stadium in the country, might not be the biggest, but it's going to be a competitive resource for recruiting. Sorry, our campus is urban based and the surrounding real estate grew up too fast, or just maybe, we would have on-campus football and basketball facilities. I wouldn't call the Sun Bowl a gem either. Way to cover up one of the endzones with tarps to hide the unused seats. I'm well aware of the current facility improvements that UTEP is undergoing, but don't flatter yourselves. There is actually discussion of either demolishing the LB and building a new stadium or committing $115 million over several years into a total facelift and complete renovation of the stadium for a long-term committment to the primary tenant (Memphis Tigers) and the facility's bowl game.
By the way, what on earth does owning your facililties have to do with your on-the-field performance or the fans, etc. USC, UCLA, Miami all play off campus in rented facilities for football and Kentucky and Louisville play off campus in rented facilities for basketball and i would say they all have done pretty darn well. recruits don't come to school saying, "well sh!t i'd play for you, but you don't own your facility...you rent it". the fact that we can rent both of our major revenue sports facilities and only be in the red by $300,000+ says a lot about our athletics. there's only 13 teams in the NCAA that operate in the black and if donations keep going up and the $700,000+ from the Grizzlies, the trend is going to put us in the black next year. Five straight top 5 bball recruiting classes (although they're not showing it, lately) is not b/c we play off camus, it's because we have a coach with a national name, a program that is in the national spotlight (13 ESPN games) and an arena that is better than anything anyone is college basketball plays with. we haven't played on campus since the 1930's in either football or basketball, so does that bother us, no. nice try, we honestly don't care whether or not we OWN our facilities, we're just glad to play in ones that give us the ability to recruit and compete. by the way, at least we have a WINNING record in our "rented" facilities....if owning your facilities is so damn important then why can't you win in them?
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Facilities and Web Sites
