The Stadium Journey Returns to Mackey

Those of you who remember The Stadium Journey and their review of Ross-Ade will be happy to know that they returned to campus for the game against High Point to review Mackey. Evidently, Paul Swaney, co-founder of the Stadium Journey received a lot of feedback on his prior visit to Mackey -- and not in a good way. To that I would say, well, it's just one fella's opinion and he's more than entitled to it. We all love Mackey but then again, wouldn't we love it no matter what?

Paul decided to come back, though, and review the new and improved Mackey Arena. His review is here and it is glowing. Enjoy.

It Could Have Been Worse...Much Worse

By now, you've probably all seen the new Keady Court graphics. In my opinion, they're very well done. J thinks the concept is sneakingly-familiar to ours from last week, but I think good design is good design and similarities happen in the design world quite often.

The new concept gets rid of the Special in center court, which is a positive. It puts focus on Keady by placing his signature on the court and doesn't genuflect at the altar of the B1G too much (it gives the right amount of respect to the conference, in my opinion).

There are a few people complaining about the change at center court and the overall design on the Purdue Athletics page on Facebook...but you won't hear any of that on this site. The Athletic Department got this one right, in our opinion as we were never huge fans of the train at center court and always like things that lean toward classic and simple.

With all of the poor decisions and near mistakes made over the last few years by the Purdue marketing family, this is a victory...and they needed one.

Coulda been worse.

Mackey Ticket Update

The Mackey reallocation process is now complete, as per the University.

Morgan Burke spoke about the news:

"First and foremost, I want to thank our loyal John Purdue Club members for bearing with us during the last two months," athletics director Morgan Burke said. "My pledge to you in April was that we would be ready and willing to assist, and I hope everyone who went through the process found the tools manageable and our staff accommodating. At the same time, we recognize there is disappointment by some individuals who had to move out of seats they held for many years."

"Of course," he did not add, "as I also reminded you in the spring, if more of you cheap jerks gave us your money there wouldn't be a risk of Matt Painter leaving. Take your new seats and like 'em."

On a more useful note, remaining upper level tickets will go on sale to the general public tomorrow and you can get them by calling the ticket office or ordering them online. The price is $394 for a season ticket, plus $100 labeled as a "Legacy Fund donation." Yeah, so about $500 clams gets you a season ticket. Still seems like a good deal to me.

Also, some of those high-roller courtside seats remain available to JPC members at the "All-American" level and above. Not sure how many readers we have in that category, but if we do, have at 'em and don't worry about any waste -- we'll be glad to take any games you can't use off your hands.

Tuesday Gumbo

For the first time ever, I'll be forced to root for the Celtics

JJ and Smooge spoke with the press together outside of Boston about playing together again and looking ahead to next season. There were a few interesting tidbits I took from the presser.

-Since the Celtics have more retired numbers than any team in the league, the former #25 & #33 don't have a ton of options for next season.
-JJ will be number 12 to honor his Mom who wore that number in high school.
-Moore will sport 55...as he used to be a fan of Jason Williams a few years ago. But a few people on the message board think it's more because he was #22 in HS and #33 in college (add 'em up, Einstein).
-The two didn't have any tryouts together prior to the draft in spite of both making multiple stops at common teams.

JJ will learn under the capable, but aging (he's 35), Kevin Garnett...and Moore will will have to fight and scratch and claw his way onto the roster...but we all know what he's capable of. And in my opinion, he's always reminded me of Ben Gordon who surprised a few people a few years ago by making noise for the Bulls early in his career.

Keady Court Revamp
Back when I was at Purdue in the mid/late 90s, I had a chance to play on Mackey's hardwood a few times...and I was simply amazed at how many deadspots the old wood surface had. A few years later, the athletic department replaced the wood and gave the court a new paint job...a few years after that, it was re-named Keady Court.

Due to the sheer pounding college courts take, they need to be replaced every 10 or 15 years, so a change was imminent. But, hard rain and on-going construction have combined to form a destructive force that sped up the replacement calendar for Keady Court.

A concept of something I'd like to see on the new surface

Looking Ahead
This summer has gone pretty slowly (from a sports standpoint). The Indy Car season, paltry recruiting morsels and classic games on different networks can only tide us over so long...so in the coming weeks we'll take a look at Hope's squad...what to look forward to, what has us concerned and what flat-out scares us to death.

Stay tuned.

Boilers Plan To Exact Revenge on Northern Illinois

The Purdue athletic department, cunning and skillful as we know them to be, has scored another coup with the scheduling of Northern Illinois as the black and gold's first victim at the new and improved Mackey Arena.

On 11/11/11 (why we're all so hell bent on it being that date is still lost on me), the Boilermakers will open the new arena (well, technically the volleyball team will christen it a few days earlier -- makes perfect sense to Morgan Burke) against the Huskies.

Remember, this is the university that humbled Danny Hope's Boilers two years ago and led to truly professional cheering in the pressbox by those "covering" the Huskies. Well, after lecturing Boilerdowd on his tawdry pressbox behavior (we're still trying to figure out why he was talked down to by the athletic department but those stooges were apparently not), the school has done their best to find a way to get back at Northern Illinois by rubbing a win in their faces.

Hey, it was this or diving.

A Reader-Suggested Revised Mackey Seat Map

Yesterday I posted about the Mackey re-seating and what did we all learn from that? Well, if you read the comments section, you learn that regular reader Boilergal has large people sitting next to her. Hey, wait a minute.... WE sometimes sit next to her! In T-Mill's seats! T-Mill, did you hear what she called you?

We also learned from Boilergal that if you don't like the seating situation, become a rich alum and buy good seats. Problem solved!

I don't think it's that big a deal that the good seats cost money. My issue is with the JPC control of everything and, more significantly, the weak student seating position within Mackey. To review, this is the proposed seating chart for the "new" Mackey in the fall of 2011:

For those with bad eyes, the darkest color is the proposed student section. Note, zero students tickets along either sideline...at any level. Reader Ryan went to work immediately and came up with what would be a dream solution and I felt it warranted being shared with everyone. Have a look:

Hoooo-baby. That would be fantastic. Can you imagine how that side of the arena would look/feel/sound? And they could carry the enthusiasm even over the lame-o people who sit on their hands and leave with ten minutes to go. Obviously, this would never happen. But it's fun to dream.

Thanks, Ryan, for the quick photoshop job.

Mackey Renovation Re-Seating & Other Nuggets

For those interested in information regarding the re-seating at Mackey for this fall, check out this story and the accompanying PDF that goes into detail about how awesome the renovation is...for the softball team, among others. Huh?

Anyway, with the seating capacity decreasing a bit, there will be a shuffling of where people sit. Ideally, we'd like to see them take the people who don't cheer and relocate their seats to University Drive. Absent that, though, we'd like to see the students have a more prominent and effective position within the seating structure. Reader Alan tweeted that the students are indeed expected to have more of a lower-bowl presence, expanded to both ends, which is a step in the right direction. Here is a seating chart that shows where the students will have seating:

The darkest color represents student seats, which you can see include wedges at both ends of the court. Not the best in the Big Ten -- by far -- but not awful.

Less pleasing is the heavy reliance on John Purdue Club membership in order to gain any level of priority for your new seats. In fact, you're more or less forced to join JPC if you want to be sure you have your tickets back, though it doesn't explicitly say that. The brochure does acknowledge, though, that even if you've had season tickets for years, you don't get any priority points for that unless you join the JPC. And, good news! You can join by March 31 and get credit for all those years of loyalty! Never mind the money you've spent... you gotta join up and spend more! Whee! Way to thank loyal ticketholders!

Also interesting is the pricing for the new club seating and courtside seating. At first, I couldn't figure out if the prices posted are for a season ticket or if it's just for the license for the seats. As in, PSLs, the thing many NFL teams do to screw their fans over and conduct a blatant cash grab. Regardless, what is being published as the "price" for a courtside seat is -- ready for this, midwest? -- $8500. Then I read more carefully and learned that the $8500 is, in fact, just a seat license, and your actual ticket prices will be tacked on as the season approaches.

Go ahead and swallow now.

Oh, but hey, the good thing is that you also get a women's season ticket! Everybody loves the fundamentals of the game and being able to watch young women work on those fundamentals is worth $8500 by itself.

Another tidbit I found interesting is that there will be club areas where alcohol will be available. I always thought you couldn't have alcohol on state property in Indiana and since Purdue was a state school, there wasn't a loophole. I guess I was wrong. Time to booze it up and then sit courtside and yell at 19 year old boys!

There's no doubt the new Mackey will be lovely, but the ramming of the JPC down people's throats is kind of annoying, and we continue to wish the students had a more prominent and impactful location. But all in all, this is about what you'd expect from Purdue University. That's not a good or a bad thing... it's just how it is.

Checking Up with the Ostrich (& Notes)

Couldn't find photo of Hummel in USA uniform

If you haven't done so, I highly suggest reading Hummel's blog while in Serbia...

Robbie Sounds off

Pat Forde Thinks Matty's Hot
Alright, not really, but he does think two of Purdue's current rivalries are of a lot of interest...The Purdue v. IU rivalry didn't make the list...for a myriad of reasons, in my opinion.

Getting to know Coach Hope
Whether or not you liked the hire of Coach Hope over a year ago, many of you have grown to like his demeanor in interviews and at community events. If you'd like to get to know him a bit more, check out this video series talking to Tiller's successor from WLFI & GBI.

Mackey Update
Photos of what's happening around Mackey are up at Purduesports.com

Mackey Project

CBS College Sports posted this video of the Mackey project...Looks like things are drastically changing.

Hard hat area