I'm not an architect, I'm just saying it's a problem with the current arena that's costing us money, which obviously matters. If we don't have the money to fix it then we don't have it, but it does matter.

It's a "problem" in what terms?

Fan experience?

It's "costing us money" in what terms- ones you can't name?

I have a big problem believing that ROI has not been done.

Its a very nebulous benefit and its impact several steps upstream from the result that you want to impact. For example, lets say you're a rich *******, but in this case, you just want to win thats all that matters to you like a true fan. For convenience, we'll say you're Aplin. As the King of the Beavers, you can buy and update the arena for $100 million and put your gas station's name on it. Or what if over ten years you just paid basketball players with a total $5 million a year ($50 million) and put their faces on a handful of your hundreds of billboards across the state/country. Which would be more effective? And cost effective?

Renovating the arena is nice, and maybe it is a move Athletics could and has been considering, but in terms of the business, its a very much of a spend money to make money and then hope we're better because we're a little richer, and not like "we need to do this to win now" type decision.

What do you mean in what terms? In terms of having money. In the new revenue sharing age, schools need to make more money to offset the new expenditure of player payroll, where's that money coming from?

But you can't just raise ticket prices or concession prices. The key, like literally everyone knows, is to make the experience good so people don't mind spending more money. People will spend money for a good time, but Reed is not a good time right now.

It doesn't have premium areas for corporations or really high end donors (like literally every other basketball arena I'm aware of) the concessions are a complete **** show in every possible way, a lot of the seats are a million miles from the court compared to purpose-built basketball arenas.

About the only thing good about Reed compared to every other basketball arena I've been to is it's so stupidly cavernous that they were able to hang an absolutely massive video board inside of it.

Yes, putting more money in NIL would be more immediately helpful, I'm not arguing against that. I'm not even arguing that Reed needs to be updated. That's not what I'm saying. But I think this "it doesn't matter at all" attitude is ridiculous and it only seems to apply to basketball for some reason.

But I do think there's a type of donor who would rather give to something lasting that they can put their name on rather than just paying millions of dollars to players. Obviously you need both.

Edit: read the first part of your post wrong.

I would expect any rival school to poach our coaches without consequences. tu basically made our leadership look like soft suckers with baseball.

You cannot, and will not, ever get people to spend *more* money on concessions, tickets, etc and feel good about it, without a product on the court. What it would cost to change that, and what you'd get for it, is not ROI efficient.

Corporations and big money spenders don't care to hobnob annd bring their customers around Reed, and need "luxury" areas, unless we're consistently putting top 10 teams on the floor.

20ag07 said:

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You cannot, and will not, ever get people to spend *more* money on concessions, tickets, etc and feel good about it, without a product on the court. What it would cost to change that, and what you'd get for it, is not ROI efficient.

Corporations and big money spenders don't care to hobnob annd bring their customers around Reed, and need "luxury" areas, unless we're consistently putting top 10 teams on the floor.

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The product on the court is fine. Again, we averaged over 10,000 fans a game this year, that's really good!You don't have to be "consistently top ten." You just have to be consistently pretty good. Which we have been. This year and the last two seasons are #2,# 5, and #6 all time in attendance.

But I'm not even talking about getting X person to spend $2 more or something. It's how do we get Y person who isn't spending any money right now to spend some. Because of the lack of quality concessions, how expensive even the trash concessions are, how slow the lines move, etc I'd guess the vast majority of people coming to games don't spend any money inside the arena. (Now A&M itself probably doesn't care about this because it's getting a guaranteed amount from Levy, also a problem!)

And then compared to other venues, the upper deck seats at Reed are absolutely awful. Nobody up there is standing up during games or into it except on very rare occasions. Those seats might as well be at home. If those seats were better, you could probably charge more for them.

Now again, we can't fix all of those problems, but they're still problems.

bobinator said:

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I'm gonna stop arguing about this because it's tournament week and I want to enjoy one of the best teams we've ever put on the floor, I just get annoyed by this "it doesn't matter" attitude that only seems to apply to our basketball program.

Everything matters. What people mean is "it doesn't matter enough to us that we're going to spend money on it," which is fine, but then don't also come on here complaining about the regulars on this board not having high enough expectations and wanting to fire a coach if he doesn't make the Sweet 16 or whatever.

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This! 100%

Idk. they've been doing it across the street for 84 years.

And that's not the same sport.

Buzz has left all of previous teams around right now, it would make sense. Hope we keep him but first lets see if he can get a second tournament win in year 6.

At 4.4 million and another 3 yrs on his contract, I woud like him to stay with these 4 changes.....

1. Wear casual clothes when coaching the games. 3 piece suits are nice but being more relaxed
and not sweating through your clothes might help!

2. Hire an assistant coach who can install an offense. Need to get away from one on five.

3. Recruit several players who can make 3 point shots in the 40 % and higher range consistent;y.

4. Find a guru free throw coach who can teach players techniques to get their avg to at least 72%.
The coach is a consultant, not on the staff.

Indiana hired someone else

Darian DeVries

I was never very worried about Indiana

We will know after the tournament if Buzz gets an extension and commits long term. The rest of the jobs out there are not great imo.

Openings from major concerts:

-West Virginia
-Virginia
-Minnesota
-Iowa
-nc State

Perhaps one the Virginia job attracts him but it seems a stretch.

I am more concern with a program like lsu where we dont know much about mcahon's future and Buzz knows the ad Scott Woodard.

Quote:

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I am more concern with a program like lsu where we dont know much about mcahon's future and Buzz knows the ad Scott Woodard.

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Lol- do you think that Woodward and Buzz spent more than a grand total of 90 minutes talking, ever?

I don't.

phatty26 said:

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Im in agreement Reed isnt the problem it isnt great but the product on the court is the problem. I dont think Buzz will leave there are no expectations here and the product he puts on the court is boring to watch actually hard to watch and frustrating as it does not excite any fans to come out and make a two hour trip to watch that slop when they can watch it at home. BCG teams played tough but they could shoot and valued assists. We are like watching street ball.

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Our biggest win in program history we scored 46 pts under BCG. This argument is flawed.

People are remembering the 07 team which had one on the best offenses in the country.

But BCG's first 2 years were built on defense and running the shot clock down and letting Acie work his magic. Our strategy was to shorten games as much as possible.

bobinator said:

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One BCG team could shoot. The other two were bad on offense also.

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cutter said:

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People are remembering the 07 team which had one on the best offenses in the country.

But BCG's first 2 years were built on defense and running the shot clock down and letting Acie work his magic.

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Not the point of the thread but yall two are misremembering. BCG's first team was actually pretty amazing shooting the ball, easily his worst defensive team .

14th nationally in FG% (3rd in B12 play)
21st in 3P% (2nd in B12 play)
23rd in Asst/game
#34 ORtg vs #96 DRtg

The 2006 team post-Antoine and before Acie went supernova was the only bad offense BCG turned out here.

Luke The Drifter said:

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The sooner y'all realize Buzz is the best A&M will ever get, the better off you'll all be. Considering how awful A&M is at basketball NIL, facilities, fan support, and everything that's required to build a winning program, it's really pretty miraculous that Buzz (and Kennedy, and Turge, and BCG) have had the success they've had.

We are not Duke and never will be. Until our fans get as serious about basketball NIL as they are about football NIL, what we have now is our absolute ceiling.

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I agree with you conceptually but the idea we can't find an offensive guy that would increase our standing is absurd.

Hell go hire the Memphis grizzlies primary assistant and Profit.

I didn't even look at the stats of that team tbh since they didn't make the tournament and attendance wasn't all that good most of the year. Though it did pick up late.

Buzz has an automatic rollover in his contract. I think there is speculation that we will not renew the rollover. Which is why there is some smoke about him leaving. I think we are waiting to see how we do this postseason. if he gets to the sweet 16 we might roll it over. if he bows out early we wont. Which we shouldn't.

The only job I see him possibly going to is Iowa. That is not a bad job. Probably the same or better than ours.

Its the chicken or the egg. Baylor won the NC with the worst arena in the worst city in America. After that they built everything for him.

We built our new football stadium after the Manziel and Evans era. That probably would not have been built if these guys hadn't come along.

A coach had to do something special and I guarantee you we will build a new stadium and have regular sellouts

FTAG 2000 said:

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Luke The Drifter said:

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The sooner y'all realize Buzz is the best A&M will ever get, the better off you'll all be. Considering how awful A&M is at basketball NIL, facilities, fan support, and everything that's required to build a winning program, it's really pretty miraculous that Buzz (and Kennedy, and Turge, and BCG) have had the success they've had.

We are not Duke and never will be. Until our fans get as serious about basketball NIL as they are about football NIL, what we have now is our absolute ceiling.

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I agree with you conceptually but the idea we can't find an offensive guy that would increase our standing is absurd.

Hell go hire the Memphis grizzlies primary assistant and Profit.

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Yeah, I am sure the Grizzlies assistant, one of the top coaching candidates in the world would love to come be an offensive coordinator at....*checks notes*....Texas A&M.

If it's an automatic rollover how would we not renew it?

Guys, Buzz is done here. Very likely this year if he finds a job.

It automatically rolls over if we don't stop it. Like a gym membership. My guess is we are waiting to see how he does in the tournament. If he doesn't make the second weekend we shouldn't roll it over. Then contract is set with 2 or 3 year end date. I cant remember

I was interested in this year's basketball attendance, so I went to all the SEC home games box scores and got this data.

Auburn 12,257 Tuesday
Vanderbilt 9,287 Wednesday
Tennessee 12,989 Saturday
Arkansas 10,752 Saturday
Georgia 9,283 Tuesday
Oklahoma 9,379 Tuesday
LSU 12,812 Saturday
Alabama 12,997 Saturday
Texas 12,236 Saturday

Overall Average 11,332

Saturday Average 12,357

Mid-week Average 10,052

Our stated capacity is 12,997, I believe, which we had for Alabama and were practically there for Tennessee and really close for LSU. I think tu game was before classes started, so that likely explains why that game wasn't a sell-out. Only Arkansas wasn't a 12,000+ weekend attendance. Conversely, every weekday game, except Auburn, was below 10,000.

Arkansas was an 11am start, but so was Tennessee.

It's sort of funny that the overall average is really a deceiving number since only one game had an attendance that was within 1000 of it. Statistically, these data are classically bi-modal.