Avery Tells Jay Barker Greg Bryne will have an Announcement on Coleman in 2018

BamaMoon said:

I'm guessing those attendance figures aren't butts in seats but based off of ticket sales. Coleman has way too many empty seats in prime viewing locations. Some TV games it looks like half the seats around the court are empty.

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Hoot30 said:

Someone posted on another board that they would play in the BJCC. I really can't think of any other arena that could accommodate the men's and women's basketball teams, plus gymnastics for a season. Maybe, they could play a few games in Huntsville at the VBCC?

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BamaMoon said:

It's real easy to spend somebody else's money, but if renovation would not be significantly cheaper, I'd say build a new facility and that way we wouldn't have to play games in other places during renovation.

The problem with the current 15k layout is that so many of those seat are just ridiculously far from the court and are up in the rafters. We probably only fill it a few times a year, even in good years, so a slightly smaller arena with better design makes alot of sense.

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KrAzY3 said:

I have to admit to having some concerns about just renovating Coleman and lowering capacity to 10K.

First, I will admit 15K seems a little too big. The thing is, Alabama's attendance is and has actually been pretty good. They averaged almost 12K last year, which put them at 27th in attendance. Lowering the capacity below 12K would low Alabama's attendance right off the bat. I understand they're not Kentucky, so they can't expect or hope to have 20K+ attendance in any venue. However, Tennessee averaged 13.5K, Arkansas averaged 15. Alabama is 5th in the SEC in attendance. I'd like that number to go up and now down, and they can't do without around at least 13K capacity. If Alabama gets on track the demand for seats will increase. Remember, this program is vying for its rightful place as the second best program in the SEC.

That aside, it's hard to imagine a scenario in which they can make Coleman state of the art and not just be better off building a new facility. I'd have to see the plan and prices before I really form an opinion though.

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Rama Jama said:

I also think 10,000 is too small. The announced attendance last night was 12,000 which we all know as not butts in the seats. It was tickets sales. There was probably 10,000 there though and that is a good crown for that early in the season. In fact the UTA was probably the biggest crowd I have seen for a non SEC game since I've been going to the games. I'd say about 12,500 would be a good number with a tiered seating arrangement so the bottom would almost always look full. You'd have to move the Tide Pride seating, but that doesn't bother me in the least since most of them only show up for the UK and Auburn games. I have staff tix thru my wife. Whatever they decide, lets hope this is a new era of basketball at Alabama. I once told Coach Johnson(at a softball game just after he took the job) that basketball was waiting to explode, and now that he is putting a goodteam on the court, I think it will happen.

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Hoot30 said:

I heard on the Bams Radio podcast last week that the plan is to entirely gut the inside of CC, move the seats closer to the court, and reduce the capacity to around 10,000. Not sure where the team would play home games, but possibly the BJCC for a season.

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Rama Jama said:

I also think 10,000 is too small. The announced attendance last night was 12,000 which we all know as not butts in the seats. It was tickets sales. There was probably 10,000 there though and that is a good crown for that early in the season. In fact the UTA was probably the biggest crowd I have seen for a non SEC game since I've been going to the games. I'd say about 12,500 would be a good number with a tiered seating arrangement so the bottom would almost always look full. You'd have to move the Tide Pride seating, but that doesn't bother me in the least since most of them only show up for the UK and Auburn games. I have staff tix thru my wife. Whatever they decide, lets hope this is a new era of basketball at Alabama. I once told Coach Johnson(at a softball game just after he took the job) that basketball was waiting to explode, and now that he is putting a goodteam on the court, I think it will happen.

Click to expand...