Basketball game atmosphere

[CelticCat]

I just want to clarify that I don't think the adminstration is doing anything wrong for basketball. Sure there could be improvements, but really I am more disappointed with the fans than I am the "atmosphere". I've never thought the cheerleaders weren't doing there job. I wish we had more organized cheers, but the times I have seen these attempted no one cheers so it is a moot point.

We just need to start winning games and brining in a big name opponent every now and again.

[coppercat]

Please don't be too hard on our venerable old Fieldhouse. When it was first completed, and for many years there after, it was Montana's sports palace...large enough at the time to seat every student at MSC-U and half the town of Bozeman. The original capacity was around 9,600. When I was a student-athlete (football) just a few years after it was completed we were recrutiting many players from the east, especially Pennsylvania. These guys would come in from Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Harrisburg, Allentown and be awestruck when they saw their fieldhouse. They had nothing like it back home. It was especially inspiring because the football facility, Gatton Field, was as horrible as the Fieldhouse was great. You could bring in a basketball team from any part of the nation and watch their players take the floor and look around in amazement. The original idea was to make it large enough to play football in, but that was eventually scrapped. Still, it is just about 80 yards across and we used to practice on the dirt floor and hold live scrimmages in there. The punters used to try to hit the catwalks. Not many could. But time does move on and things change. The newer facilites are bright, the fans are on top of the floor, the sound system blows your ears out. MSU's Fieldhouse is not that type of facility...dedicated to basketball. It is a 'multi-purpose" building. But if there's a problem with a lack of excitement at the games I'm here to defend our facility. As mentioned above, our finest teams bred excitement! There are many modern pro basketball arenas around the country that stand empty and top flight college facilites half-full.
You can see the great memories in some of the posts above. Although I don't get there very often, I can still chills when I walk inside.

[autocat]

Mick Durham sent the program in reverse! He had one good season mixed in with numerous mediocre seasons resulting in low interest in the program. I'm open for correction! Let's hear it!

[CATATTACK]

Personally i feel that the remodel that took place around the same time as the football field sucked the life out. It is too dark! It was yellow before and bright and energetic. I think some color infusion would help. We have always had the band there, and it has always been loud. That didn't matter before. I do think a new stereo system would help. We need the sports marketing to kick it up a notch as well. The dual games Friday night had great publicity and had a good crowd. Why cant we do that same publicity for all the games? Lastly for the love of god can we get a PA announcer that knows the names he is supposed to say. He mentioned two MSU hall of famers the other night and completely butchered the names...Embarassing!

[Catfan6969]

Personally i feel that the remodel that took place around the same time as the football field sucked the life out. It is too dark! It was yellow before and bright and energetic. I think some color infusion would help. We have always had the band there, and it has always been loud. That didn't matter before. I do think a new stereo system would help. We need the sports marketing to kick it up a notch as well. The dual games Friday night had great publicity and had a good crowd. Why cant we do that same publicity for all the games? Lastly for the love of god can we get a PA announcer that knows the names he is supposed to say. He mentioned two MSU hall of famers the other night and completely butchered the names...Embarassing!

You talking about the men's or women's announcer???

[CATATTACK]

Personally i feel that the remodel that took place around the same time as the football field sucked the life out. It is too dark! It was yellow before and bright and energetic. I think some color infusion would help. We have always had the band there, and it has always been loud. That didn't matter before. I do think a new stereo system would help. We need the sports marketing to kick it up a notch as well. The dual games Friday night had great publicity and had a good crowd. Why cant we do that same publicity for all the games? Lastly for the love of god can we get a PA announcer that knows the names he is supposed to say. He mentioned two MSU hall of famers the other night and completely butchered the names...Embarassing!

You talking about the men's or women's announcer???

The Mens. I like the Womens.

[orsalak]

I agree that the teams we are bringing in are really bad. We don't have a good crowd because who gives a crap about northern new mexico womens school for the ugly. I use to buy season tickets but the preconfrence games are a waste. The conference games are better but we have to look at what Bozeman has become. People, like the person who started this thread and myself make up a large portion of the population now. I grew up watching Big East games, I know not to expect that kind of talent, but we have all heard that argument (where I come from the teams are.......). If we can get better schools comming here on a regular basis and are competative against them we will see crowds increase. Maybe it is a chicken and the egg argument? But this I know, the music that is played, the cheers that are chanted DO NOT BRING CROWDS winning does and winning against good teams really does!!!!!

[coppercat]

Personally i feel that the remodel that took place around the same time as the football field sucked the life out. It is too dark! It was yellow before and bright and energetic. I think some color infusion would help. We have always had the band there, and it has always been loud. That didn't matter before. I do think a new stereo system would help. We need the sports marketing to kick it up a notch as well. The dual games Friday night had great publicity and had a good crowd. Why cant we do that same publicity for all the games? Lastly for the love of god can we get a PA announcer that knows the names he is supposed to say. He mentioned two MSU hall of famers the other night and completely butchered the names...Embarassing!

You talking about the men's or women's announcer???

The Mens. I like the Womens.

How can that happen???
But then recently I watched a young local rookie type sportscaster refer toJohnny Unitas "Johnny YUNE-a-tus

[grizzh8r]

Personally i feel that the remodel that took place around the same time as the football field sucked the life out. It is too dark! It was yellow before and bright and energetic. I think some color infusion would help. We have always had the band there, and it has always been loud. That didn't matter before. I do think a new stereo system would help. We need the sports marketing to kick it up a notch as well. The dual games Friday night had great publicity and had a good crowd. Why cant we do that same publicity for all the games? Lastly for the love of god can we get a PA announcer that knows the names he is supposed to say. He mentioned two MSU hall of famers the other night and completely butchered the names...Embarassing!

You talking about the men's or women's announcer???

The Mens. I like the Womens.

How can that happen???
But then recently I watched a young local rookie type sportscaster refer toJohnny Unitas "Johnny YUNE-a-tus

For 3 years now, The Mens BB announcer has pronounced the name of a rather large sponsor from Billings - Denny Menholt Chevrolet - "Denny Menhoff", and pronounces Bozeman Audi "Bozeman Oddy". I'll agree that he isn't very good. Could you take over for him Catfan6969?

[CATATTACK]

Personally i feel that the remodel that took place around the same time as the football field sucked the life out. It is too dark! It was yellow before and bright and energetic. I think some color infusion would help. We have always had the band there, and it has always been loud. That didn't matter before. I do think a new stereo system would help. We need the sports marketing to kick it up a notch as well. The dual games Friday night had great publicity and had a good crowd. Why cant we do that same publicity for all the games? Lastly for the love of god can we get a PA announcer that knows the names he is supposed to say. He mentioned two MSU hall of famers the other night and completely butchered the names...Embarassing!

You talking about the men's or women's announcer???

The Mens. I like the Womens.

How can that happen???
But then recently I watched a young local rookie type sportscaster refer toJohnny Unitas "Johnny YUNE-a-tus

For 3 years now, The Mens BB announcer has pronounced the name of a rather large sponsor from Billings - Denny Menholt Chevrolet - "Denny Menhoff", and pronounces Bozeman Audi "Bozeman Oddy". I'll agree that he isn't very good. Could you take over for him Catfan6969?

I noticed the Menhoff thing too! Dont the higher ups hear this stuff? It is really embarassing as a fan!

[BozCatFan]

Ever since the Ice Dogs hockey team left the Valley Ice Garden I have tried to go to a few basketball games and have been bored. They did a great job at marketing, game management, and activities all the time. I'm not sure why MSU has not copied some of what they did in terms of making games an event and attracting students. I used to have season hockey tickets, and I'm not a big enough fan to go sit at their new rink and freeze my tail off. I enjoyed the atmosphere, socializing, and other stuff going on more than the actual game.

There is not that much to do in Bozeman during the winter, they are missing out on a huge opportunity to pack that place each game by making it the wicket step child to football. Sad thing is they could be a good time.

Might help if they played some better non-conference opponents too.

[TrueCat]

Not sure I completely agree. There is definitely room for improvement, but I think it has gotten a whole heck of a lot better in the past 5-7 years.

[UofMTigerFan]

Here are my 2 cents from an outsider who has never been to your arena. I think atmosphere is a huge problem at most college venues. The universities have to use every media timeout to pay the bills. I know the Memphis Tigers play in a 17,000 seat arena that is completely full for every game but outside of the game itself very little is done to promote student involvement or fan participation. The media timeouts are mainly spent pimping the sponsors that pay the big bucks.

Our player intro is really cool with the lights dropped & the logo whirling along the court. The crowd goes nuts. After that, time to pay the bills & forget about the fans.

Check out our player intro video " onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Sorry, do not know how to do a link but you can copy & paste.

[SonomaCat]

Ever since the Ice Dogs hockey team left the Valley Ice Garden I have tried to go to a few basketball games and have been bored. They did a great job at marketing, game management, and activities all the time. I'm not sure why MSU has not copied some of what they did in terms of making games an event and attracting students. I used to have season hockey tickets, and I'm not a big enough fan to go sit at their new rink and freeze my tail off. I enjoyed the atmosphere, socializing, and other stuff going on more than the actual game.

There is not that much to do in Bozeman during the winter, they are missing out on a huge opportunity to pack that place each game by making it the wicket step child to football. Sad thing is they could be a good time.

Might help if they played some better non-conference opponents too.

It seems like beer and the imitimate setting were pretty big factors in the excitement/atmosphere of the Ice Dogs. Besides that, what specific things do you think MSU could pull from those old Ice Dogs games in terms of ideas to improve its game atmosphere?

[BelgradeBobcat]

The media timeouts are mainly spent pimping the sponsors that pay the big bucks.

The timeouts (media and otherwise) kill the flow of a basketball game. I'd rather they cut the timeouts and go back to quarters like in high school.

[UofMTigerFan]

I could not agree more about going back to quarters. Teams cannot get in much of a rythym due to the constant stoppage of play. The stopage also gives the fans too many excuses to go grab a beer, check their iphones, or some other mundane activity. I also believe it really penalizes the better coaches. The poorer coaches just have to survive 4 minutes & the momentum of the team & the crowd is often thwarted.

Quick question- Is your basketball facility on campus?

[kmax]

I could not agree more about going back to quarters. Teams cannot get in much of a rythym due to the constant stoppage of play. The stopage also gives the fans too many excuses to go grab a beer, check their iphones, or some other mundane activity. I also believe it really penalizes the better coaches. The poorer coaches just have to survive 4 minutes & the momentum of the team & the crowd is often thwarted.

Quick question- Is your basketball facility on campus?

Completely agree on the four minutes and kill the momentum thing, so true.

Thanks for the outside perspective UofMTigerFan, always nice to have. And yes, our fieldhouse is right on campus, within walking distance of all of the dorms (essiantially just across the parking lots from the three of the biggest dorms).

Some mostly historical info on the fieldhouse fromthe MSU site:

In 1956, Montana State University's Brick Breeden Fieldhouse/Worthington Arena opened as the premiere college basketball and all-purpose facility in the Northwest. The MSU Fieldhouse, as it was then known, was the largest domed structure in the western hemisphere without a center support. Nearly a half-century and the largest facility renovation project in school history later, MSU's home basketball arena remains one of the finest around.

The most distinctive feature in Worthington Arena is the massive television screen at the Arena's east end, which is used for replays and promotional purposes. Elgin Baylor, John Stockton and Kevin Johnson are among the great players that have played in the Fieldhouse.

Max Worthington Arena also houses the Bobcat Indoor Track and Field squad, and played host to the largest crowd to ever witness a volleyball match in school and Big Sky history, as 6,378 fans watched the 'Cats down arch-rival Montana in 2002.

Also housed in the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse are the Department of Athletics' offices, the Bill Ogle Hall of Fame Room, team locker rooms, the Academic Success Center, the D'Agostino Strength Training Center, the Athletic Training Center and the All-American Café.

The Brick Breeden Fieldhouse also plays host to concerts, including the likes of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Toby Keith, Clint Black, Wynonna Judd, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, Matchbox 20, BB King and Snoop Dogg. In addition, numerous trade shows and rodeos are held under the giant wooden structure.

Inside:



Inside with other events to give a feel for size (first is indoor track with bball court in center, second is a volleyball tourney setup)



Outside (looking from one of nearby dorms):

[UofMTigerFan]

Thanks for the info. It would appear to me a good deal of your fan apathy could come from being so far from the court. I went to the sweet 16, elite 8, & the final 4 last year & at each stop the complex was multi-functional. Although each stop was a blast, I never really felt like I was part of the game. The space from my seats (never worse than 4th row) to the court always left feeling my voice could not be heard & I could not influence the game. Basketball courts are fairly small & it seems to me the closer the fans are to the action the louder they tend to be.

I love that you guys have it on campus. That should allow for great student body atetndance. My Tigers play both football 7 basketball off campus. We have beer but miss out on great student participation. Most of our fans are older as it costs between $10,000 & $15,000 just for the priviledge of buying tickets. My 2 BB tickets ended up costing me around $13,000. That said, they can't give away football tickets. You can go to any of our football games for free.

[rtb]

Thanks for the info. It would appear to me a good deal of your fan apathy could come from being so far from the court.

I think you nailed it! This weekend I sat in the 5th or 6th row(because no one was around) and finally for the first time in years felt like I could be part of the crowd and the game. Too bad we were playing an NAIA Division II school so there really wasn't any taunting, talking to the refs, etc. that even needed to be done.

[prowlalum80]

This is a football state, not a basketball I do not think you will ever see a truly college basketball atmosphere in Bozeman...