UCLA Charging Half A Million Dollars for a Seat

 

Greg Doyel has a scathing article at CBSsports.com about the new ticket price for courtside seats to the UCLA Bruins men’s basketball games. Apparently the Bruins are charging over half a million dollars, over $500,000.00 for a courtside seat to the games. Doyel lets the Bruins have it pretty bad in the article, but there are some good counterpoints to his arguments.

 

First off, the Bruins are trying to renovate their arena, Pauley Pavilion, which will take a lot of money to do- somewhere near $200 million. The State of California isn’t exactly rife with cash right now, so the University is trying to raise funs its own. If there are fans out there who are willing to pay the ticket price (knowing that it’s pretty high so that they can help support the renovations), then let them. It’s their money, they can do what they want with it. Will the tickets sell? I guess we will find out soon enough.

 

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on July 31, 2009 - Post a comment

Wooden Best Ever Says Sporting News

The Sporting news, one of the most respected journals and national magazines in the nation, has declared John Wooden to be the greatest coach of all-time. John Wooden received the honor at a luncheon in Los Angeles in a room, probably not so coincidentally called, the john Wooden Room. Many of Wooden’s players and assistants were there. Brad Howland, the current coach of UCLA, where Wooden won 10 national championships, was also on hand, saying:

“It was really very easy, I think, for the people on the panel to vote for this award. He was the greatest teacher ever. His integrity, the way he lives his life, is a model for all of us.”

In other coaching news, you ought to read this Luke Winn story. To read it is to get a deeper understanding about what it was that made Bobby Knight such a good coach. Despite his fiery temper, he was a keen teacher and one of the best motivators of all time. No John Wooden, but up there.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on July 30, 2009 - Post a comment

The Mountain West and Western Athletic Conferences

Is Colorado State or New Mexico State in the Mountain West or the Western Athletic Conference? Which one is considered to be a Mid-Major conference? The WAC and the MWC get confused quite a bit, so it’s up to use to help clarify the situation. They both use the word West, and they both inhabit the same basic region, so it’s pretty easy to see how these two conferences could get confused, especially if you live in the East. Here are the rosters. Memorize these teams!

Western Athletic Conference:

  • Boise State
  • Fresno State
  • Hawaii
  • Idaho
  • Louisiana Tech
  • Nevada
  • New Mexico State
  • San Jose State
  • Utah State

Mountain West Conference:

  • Air Force
  • Brigham Young
  • Colorado State
  • University of New Mexico
  • San Diego State
  • Texas Christian
  • UNLV
  • Utah
  • Wyoming

High Major and Mid Major:

Which one of these two conferences is considered to be a mid-major by college basketball terms? According to the Mid-Majority, a blog dedicated to mid-majors, the Western Athletic Conference is actually considered a mid-major. They rank the conferences by athletic budget and see which ones have the real power in the game of hoops. The Average athletic budget of the Mountain West was roughly $241,000, while the average athletic budget of the Western Athletic was roughly $185,000, technically dipping it below the mid major status line. Football is another story altogether, as both schools can send teams to compete in the BCS Championship.

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Permalink - Posted in General on July 29, 2009 - Post a comment

College Basketball Quick Hits!

We went to Fox Sports this morning and picked out a few of the stories and articles that grabbed our interest. Here they are in no particular order. Enjoy!

The top ten returning college hoops players are chronicled in pictorial form right here. You can probably name quite a few. Somewhat surprisingly there are no players in the slide show from Michigan State.

A Memphis recruit is going to forgo the college game and play in Europe for the cash. A top young prospect named Latavious Williams has made the decision to enter the European workforce, rather than the American college system, joining other prep recruits like Brandon Jennings and Jeremy Tyler. Will the trend continue?

Jim Calhoun has survived broken ribs, cancer and controversy after controversy. He’s 67 but he still plans on going into the next season full-force. Who wouldn’t considering the money he’s making at his state job? Just kidding, Jim!

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on July 28, 2009 - Post a comment

Arena War: Rupp Arena vs. Freedom Hall

Which arena is better, Louisville’s Freedom Hall or Kentucky’s Rupp Arena? CBSsports.com is pitting one arena against another to determine who has the best home court advantage, which arena is the best as far as fan experience and which characteristics are the best to have at a college basketball arena. This week it’s a battle between natural Bluegrass State rivals- Kentucky and Louisville.

It seems as though this one is an easy selection, not because Freedom Hall is so bad (it’s really one of the better arenas in the country), but because Rupp is such a classic place. They still have bleacher seats, people! Everyone loves that the arena is meant to maximize the number of people they can cram in there- they even forgo luxury boxes. Not many other big-time schools can boast such a commitment to the common fan, the starving student and the cheering section.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on July 27, 2009 - Post a comment

Great NCAA Basketball Posterizations

The talk of the basketball world these days is the release of the LeBron James posterizatoin video. Xavier’s Jordan Crawford was the one delivering the famous dunk over LeBron, but there have been plenty of other famous dunks in recent years. Thankfully SportsIllustrated.com has provided a nice little feature that documents about half a dozen high-flying dunks that you might have seen recently.

Speaking of dunking on people, the whole LeBron dunk video has raised some questions from the Final Four Blog. For example, what constitutes getting dunked on, and what makes it particularly embarrassing? Why is getting dunked on such an insult? It seems to be that, if you play basketball for any amount of time, you’re going to end up in a situation where you have bad positioning down low, or someone is coming in hard to the hoop and you just plain can’t block the dunk. This happens with smaller guards and wing players sometimes, making getting dunked on relatively hard to avoid. The SI videos show Greg Paulus getting dunked on a couple of times. But he’s what, 6-1? For a 6-8 guy like Danny Green, dunking on Paulus when he has his feet planted shouldn’t be that impressive.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on July 24, 2009 - Post a comment

See the Video of Lebron Getting Dunked On

Xavier’s Jordan Crawford dunked on LeBron James at the Lebron James Skills Academy a few weeks ago. At the request of Nike and LeBron James, the video recordings of the dunk were confiscated and nobody was allowed to see the footage. Until now.

Here at SportsIllustrated.com you can see the video of the dunk heard round the world. While the dunk itself isn’t that embarrassing for LeBron, the fact that he and Nike tries to hide it is what really got people fired up about the video. If this thing had leaked out to the public like some typical video, there’s no way it would have received much attention at all. The internet has done with this video what it did with the Barbra Streisand home picture. Made something that was supposed to be censored even more accessible and even more popular. Will this happen with Kindle’s recent censorship of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm?

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on July 23, 2009 - Post a comment

John Wooden Quotes

Wednesday mornings are sometimes the hardest mornings of all. It’s the furthest you’re going to get from the weekends, as the next one doesn’t come until Friday afternoon and the last one was way back on Sunday. What you college hoops fans need is a pick-me-up. How about some quotes from the legendary John Wooden, the Wizard of Westwood. As you know John Wooden is one of the most successful college basketball coaches of all time, having won multiple championships with the UCLA Bruins. He’s also a minor philosopher. Read a few of these quotes from BrainyQuote and become inspired!

“A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.”

“Ability is a poor man’s wealth.”

“Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.”

“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

“Be prepared and be honest.”

“Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.”

“Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”

“Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on July 22, 2009 - Post a comment

Leveling the Financial Playing Field for College Basketball Programs

“Ve vant ze money, Lebowski.” —Nihilist, The Big Lebowski

Mark Schalbach of ESPN has a lengthy but interesting and very important article about the influence and importance of the business side of college basketball. Even though college basketball is one of the least money-influenced sports around, it can still at times be all about the money.

College basketball programs rely on the universities that support them, and the universities rely on state, local and federal government assistance. When tough economic times hit, fewer dollars are dumped into education, and the so-called frills- like music, art and athletics- are oftentimes the first programs to get hauled out to the chopping block. What does this mean for college basketball budgets? Right now coaches and athletic directors are typically being asked to do the same things with less money. It’s a bad situation, and it will probably get worse in the next few years. The worst case scenario would be basketball teams dropping scholarships and eventually dismantling the sport altogehter. But that’s relatively unlikely for the bigger universities. Like most things, it’s the smaller, poorer schools who will suffer the most. Let’s hoep the mid-majors can find their way through the hard times.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on July 21, 2009 - Post a comment

Twin Coaches at Carroll; Stanford Lands a Top Recruit

Here’s a nice story to start off your work week. Carroll College, an NAIA school in Montana, has recently hired a new assistant basketball coach. The weird thing is that the new assistant coach, Brock Veltri, is the identical twin brother of the current head coach, Brandon Veltri. Brock used to be an assistant in a small Portland, Oregon area school called Pacific University. While it’s not that uncommon to have family members work together in the same university, it is a bit odd that one twin would have such a position of greater authority over the other one. Imagine being the same age as your brother, but he’s technically your boss. Good luck, Fighting Saints!

In other news… the Stanford men’s basketball team has just landed a top recruit, a guard from Washington named Aaron Bright.  Basically, Bright is expected to be a part of the Max Preps Top 100 recruit rankings when they come out here shortly.  According to Aaron’s mother, Bright has verbally committed to attend Stanford University. He’s 5-11, can score from many places on the floor, and is a rising star in the high school basketball world in Washington. Remember that name- Aaron Bright- because you might hear it a lot more often in a few years.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on July 20, 2009 - Post a comment


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