ACCT at MSG? No Soap.

[throatybeard]

This possibility was discussed in a previous thread, but I can't find it. If anyone is better at using the search engine than I am, please merge.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/8423147/madison-square-garden-not-acc-tournament-plans-sources-say

[theAlaskanBear]

Well hey....there is always that other brand spankin new arena in NYC. It's may not be the Mecca of Basketball, but its still NYC....

[uh_no]

Well hey....there is always that other brand spankin new arena in NYC. It's may not be the Mecca of Basketball, but its still NYC....

I think having two tournaments in the same place at the same time would be detrimental to both leagues.

[brevity]

This possibility was discussed in a previous thread, but I can't find it. If anyone is better at using the search engine than I am, please merge.

Merge away:
http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/forums/showthread.php?29066

[Cameron]

Well hey....there is always that other brand spankin new arena in NYC. It's may not be the Mecca of Basketball, but its still NYC....

In the ESPN article I read yesterday, it was reported that the management of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn did not submit a bid to the ACC and is not attempting to pursue the conference's tournament. According to the article, since neither MSG nor the Barclays Center met the ACC's recent deadline to bid for the rights to host its 2016 through 2021 tournaments, the ACC will not be taking the Grand Daddy to the Big Apple anytime soon.

While Madison Square Garden is the holy grail of professional athletic venues in the United States -- with the exception of perhaps Fenway Park, Wrigley or Lambeau Field -- and located at the core of the sports world, the ACC Tournament belongs in the state of North Carolina, namely in the Coliseum in Greensboro. The city may not be as attractive or fun to party in as places like NYC, Tampa or D.C., but it's just home. The tournament has a much grander feel when being played there. That's how I'd explain it. And I imagine that is why the ACC has decided to again keep Greensboro as the home of its tournament through 2015.

[Scorp4me]

Do ya think "Johnny Boy" as the article so lovingly called him, really wanted the tournament in NYC...or maybe that was just what he had to say. Personally, good riddance and I would have been disappointed if we'd seen the tournament in NYC anyway!

[Kdogg]

I think having two tournaments in the same place at the same time would be detrimental to both leagues.

Well both the Big East (MSG) and the A10 (Barclays) will be played in NYC starting next year and probably for the foreseeable future.

Does it make any financial sense for MSG to even bid on the tournamant? Yes the Big East will have less schools based in the northeast but the NYC crowds will still fill the arena.

[Duvall]

I think having two tournaments in the same place at the same time would be detrimental to both leagues.

How so? If anything, it would have drawn attention to the two tournaments.

[ForkFondler]

With the current Big East membership, does in really make sense for them to be in NYC every year? How about Chicago, Philly, or even Dallas.

[uh_no]

With the current Big East membership, does in really make sense for them to be in NYC every year? How about Chicago, Philly, or even Dallas.

I looked it up once, but i believe there are 7 schools in the big east closer to new york than the closest acc school. Even with the loss of syracuse and pittsburgh, the big east is still heavily concentrated in the northeast.

[ForkFondler]

I looked it up once, but i believe there are 7 schools in the big east closer to new york than the closest acc school. Even with the loss of syracuse and pittsburgh, the big east is still heavily concentrated in the northeast.

Well sure, the NYC is better for the Big East than it is for the ACC. But given the innumerable other schools that will be in the BE in the near future that are nowhere near New York, rotating somewhere else every other year or so would make as much sense as the ACC playing in NYC every four years or so.

[tieguy]

While Madison Square Garden is the holy grail of professional athletic venues in the United States

I don't usually play the "new york media bias" card, but if there is any time it is ever appropriate to be played, this is it. The current MSG (can't speak to previous ones) is a dark, dingy, unpleasant place to watch a basketball game (or any sporting event for that matter). It is of course true that many great events have happened there, which gives sportswriters the chills when they walk in and verbal diarrhea when they walk out. But it's still a dump. Period.

It isn't old enough to have character, like Fenway or Cameron. Those are cramped, and uncomfortable, but the architecture and design take you back to a time which (in memory though not in fact) was a more pleasant, simpler, more relaxed time - exactly the feelings you want when you're disconnecting from the world for a few hours to take in a sporting event. MSG's architecture and design are from a forgettable, unpleasant, unfriendly period of American architectural history, and invoke primarily feelings of entering a garbage compactor (at best) or a jail (at worst).

In short, the place has no redeeming value as a venue whatsoever, and if it were in any other city on earth it would have every sportswriter who visits it calling for it to be torn down and replaced with a modern venue that either looks to the future and emulates the greatest things about the city it is in (like the new Brooklyn arena) or at least does a passable job of emulating the best parts of the past (like the new Yankee stadium).

Instead it's a "holy grail." What a crock.

~tieguy (who absolutely loves NYC, and even most of the mythologizing around NYC, but the town deserves a less awful venue than MSG)

[uh_no]

Well sure, the NYC is better for the Big East than it is for the ACC. But given the innumerable other schools that will be in the BE in the near future that are nowhere near New York, rotating somewhere else every other year or so would make as much sense as the ACC playing in NYC every four years or so.

unlikely with the history the Big East has built in the garden.....

[Cameron]

It is of course true that many great events have happened there, which gives sportswriters the chills when they walk in

And that is what matters most. When it comes to designating sporting venues as iconic, it is the legendary moments and acts of greatness that played their stages that make them hallowed, not the bricks and mortar that construct their walls.


It isn't old enough to have character, like Fenway or Cameron. Those are cramped, and uncomfortable, but the architecture and design take you back to a time which (in memory though not in fact) was a more pleasant, simpler, more relaxed time - exactly the feelings you want when you're disconnecting from the world for a few hours to take in a sporting event. MSG's architecture and design are from a forgettable, unpleasant, unfriendly period of American architectural history, and invoke primarily feelings of entering a garbage compactor (at best) or a jail (at worst).

Do you think anyone really considered the architecture of old Yankee Stadium, which experienced a slew of facelifts over the years in an attempt to keep the venue contemporary as each new decade passed, to be a marvel of old-world design and the reason that visitors were transported to a different era when catching a game there? Near the end of its life, the stadium looked virtually nothing like the place that guarded the sacred diamond of soil that Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle once trotted. It had become, as you call The Garden, a site suitable for depositing garbage. The outer facade of the stadium could have passed for a penal institution or a corporate headquarters for K-Mart. There was nothing extraordinary about it.

But that hardly mattered. The unsightly and deteriorating old Yankee Stadium was lauded as a cathedral of baseball as much for what happened there and who called it home than for anything that could be measured somatically. The mystique of the really great sports buildings on earth -- the Fenway Parks, the Cameron Indoors, the Lambeau Fields, the Madison Square Gardens -- derives from the blood that runs through their beams, the moments of wonder that summon their spirits and the chilling stories that their seats could tell. If a building is filled with so much history that it imposes upon its inhabitants a sudden and powerful sense of being someplace remarkable as soon as they walk through its doors, as you admit Madison Square Garden does, then there is obviously something divine about that place, something that makes being there more exceptional than anywhere else. That is the pure definition of having character.


Instead it's a "holy grail." What a crock.

I think if you visit many other fan forums devoted to other college basketball programs around the country, you will find that many would use that same phrase to describe Cameron Indoor. The popular argument is that Cameron is a shoe box, an inadequately small venue that would not be fit to house many of the elite high school basketball teams in prep hoops-crazy states such as Kentucky or Indiana. That no matter the teeming history that envelops the people who seat themselves in its ancient wooden chairs, Cameron is just a poorly-lit, claustrophobic barn from the olden days, and not worthy of the same veneration of the more grand, visually imposing buildings. We know, of course, that this is far from reality and that their version of Cameron is just one pocket of the population's perspective. Like your opinion of The Garden.

[ForkFondler]

unlikely with the history the Big East has built in the garden.....

In the brave new world of conference realignment, history just doesn't buy what it used to.

[blazindw]

I don't usually play the "new york media bias" card, but if there is any time it is ever appropriate to be played, this is it. The current MSG (can't speak to previous ones) is a dark, dingy, unpleasant place to watch a basketball game (or any sporting event for that matter). It is of course true that many great events have happened there, which gives sportswriters the chills when they walk in and verbal diarrhea when they walk out. But it's still a dump. Period.

It isn't old enough to have character, like Fenway or Cameron. Those are cramped, and uncomfortable, but the architecture and design take you back to a time which (in memory though not in fact) was a more pleasant, simpler, more relaxed time - exactly the feelings you want when you're disconnecting from the world for a few hours to take in a sporting event. MSG's architecture and design are from a forgettable, unpleasant, unfriendly period of American architectural history, and invoke primarily feelings of entering a garbage compactor (at best) or a jail (at worst).

In short, the place has no redeeming value as a venue whatsoever, and if it were in any other city on earth it would have every sportswriter who visits it calling for it to be torn down and replaced with a modern venue that either looks to the future and emulates the greatest things about the city it is in (like the new Brooklyn arena) or at least does a passable job of emulating the best parts of the past (like the new Yankee stadium).

Instead it's a "holy grail." What a crock.

~tieguy (who absolutely loves NYC, and even most of the mythologizing around NYC, but the town deserves a less awful venue than MSG)

They've been doing renovations on MSG the past couple of years and I'll tell you the gameday experience is much better than it used to be...better seats, better concessions, etc. Having said that, it's not the best venue. But, the most iconic sports venues aren't always the nicest when it comes to amenities or have a ton of seats. One need only look at the small building across the walkway from Card Gym for an example of this. ;)

[tieguy]

They've been doing renovations on MSG the past couple of years and I'll tell you the gameday experience is much better than it used to be...better seats, better concessions, etc. Having said that, it's not the best venue. But, the most iconic sports venues aren't always the nicest when it comes to amenities or have a ton of seats. One need only look at the small building across the walkway from Card Gym for an example of this. ;)

Like I said, the design/architecture of that small building across the walkway from Card evokes memories of a pleasant time. Ditto Fenway. By all accounts, ditto the old Yankee Stadium. (It was a time primarily pleasant only for white men, but we'll leave that aside for now). That makes up for the various physical unpleasantness.

The design/architecture of that large building in "Madison Square" (ha) evokes memories of the 60s and 70s in New York, which, you know... not so hot. I mean, seriously, the building is so ugly that people entering into it were memorably said to "scurry in like rats." If those are the feelings you want evoked when you go into a building, I mean, by all means... just don't compare it positively to actual jewels like Cameron and Fenway.

~tieguy (who misses the Orange Bowl, but admits it was a dump)