re: Ranking the SEC Basketball Arenas

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Carolina Coliseum >>> Colonial Life Arena. CLA is fine, but it was deliberately built as a generic arena to host all kinds of events aside from basketball. It only sells out (~18,000) when SC is good which of course has been few and far between. So even if you have an okay crowd of like 10k, it still feels cavernous. The Coliseum was a proper college basketball arena. No upper deck, just 12,000 steep-arse seats where the fans were right on top of you.

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I remember well when the Carolina Coliseum was built. Across from Gibbs Volkswagen, it was immediately known as "The House that Frank Built" in honor of Frank McGuire. When we were still playing basketball there it was simply known as The Frank. When I was in college, right after it was built, we used-to camp out around it for first come, first served, tickets ... 1000s of us students. Those were the days under Frank.

When it was built, designed, Coach McGuire insisted it have 12,501 seating capacity ... alterations had to me made. Why? Because he hated NC State so badly, and their arena held 12,500 .... ours had to be bigger.

I loved Coach, he was a great man. Paul Dietzel and he were such great friends irl in those days. Two great men. Then you add Bobby Richardson and later Jim Carlin, et al ... good times.

Little known fact. The same architects that designed Bud Walton designed the CLA. When we visted all the various "best arenas" at the time, Mike (McGee) liked Bud Walton the best. Ford, in Ann Arbor, was his second favorite. The CLA is almost identical to Bud Walton.

The CLA was sold out last night ... but there were some empty seats. TV timing screws things up these days. Matter of fact, I hear as of this morning, the remaining home games are all sold out.