One Fan's UCLA Basketball Blog
News, analysis, and commentary about the UCLA Bruins basketball program
Friday, February 25, 2005
 
facelift for pauley?
Yesterday's LA Times had a story from Diane Pucin about whether Pauley needs some renovation. Ed O'Bannon is among those giving an opinion. In the article, the main pro argument for renovation/rebuilding is that it will help with recruiting, while the main argument against is nostalgia and the mystique of the building. I don't think there's any doubt that some type of modification will take place: too many other schools (Cal, Stanford, Washington, for example) are updating their facilities, and we will need to keep up. Add that to the fact that we should be able to increase revenues with a newly designed arena, and there's no way of stopping it. neither 17-year basketball players nor corporate sponsors are overly concerned with the tradition of ucla. as it is now, i barely recognize the inside of Pauley compared to when i was a student because there are now ads EVERYWHERE. So Dan Guerrero, since I know you're reading this :), do what you have to do, but two requests:

1) please allocate a substantial amount of the floor seating to the student section, and
2) for goodness sake, don't sell the naming rights to some publicity-hungry corporation (I can see it now: Mann Theaters Arena at Pauley Pavillion, or Nell and John Wooden Court presented by Noodle Planet)
Comments:
Nostalgia and the mystique?
You're kidding, right? After they put advertising over everything but the ballboy's trousers, what class the place once had is now kaputt. And you could put those 10 banners inside the local high school gym and you'd have more mystique. Pauley is overdue for a refurb, but let's not pretend that it's going to restore the glory days. Only putting a top ranked team on the floor is going to do that.
 
"Only putting a top ranked team on the floor is going to do that." I completely agree, and I think Ben Howland is on his way to accomplishing that.

By the way, Pauley has 11 banners.
 
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