checking out Arlington this afternoon

oldguystudent · February 23, 2013

Some no name team is playing here today, so I came to check them out. But I digress.

I won't say that Arlington's new joint is sub par, but $78 million for this band box? Somebody's got some serious budget 'splainin to do.

To their credit, they sell beer in the pedestrian concessions. No velvet ropes necessary!

NT03 · February 23, 2013

UTA is the last team in my 4 game parlay #gomavs

KRAM1 · February 24, 2013

To their credit, they sell beer in the pedestrian concessions. No velvet ropes necessary!

Well, that counts for something. I like beer. Let's have beer at Apogee and the Super Pit! Beer drinkers will pay inflated prices for beer at sporting events. So, more concession dollars for UNT. Bring it on!

And...btw...no velvet ropes for a beer or two before UNT BB games...just join the Mean Green Club at a very reasonable level and BINGO! Or, just get flyonthewall to bring you in as a guest. No velvet ropes required.

oldguystudent · February 24, 2013

I didn't even have a beer. Six bucks for a 12oz can of Miller Lite is indeed too inflated, but the fact that it was an option, in the seats, during the game, was nice.

One nice thing they had, for the velvet rope crowd, was a club level for basketball. Obviously, I didn't even try to go in there, but you could see it across the arena, people milling about in there. I looked at their website, and I think it's a $1,000 donation plus seats to get in there.

Overall, the child and I found the entirety of the production, from the character of the PA announcer, to the quality of cheerleaders and dancers (dude..just..dude), to the striped overall student cheer section tossing out insults "Hey! You're bad at basketball!" to absolutely pale in comparison to what we've got in Denton.

Bottom line, $78 million to get 1,300 people in attendance? Where's the ROI on that?

Regarding the teams, I noticed that the players on both sides looked small, tiny in fact, and slow compared to the players for North Texas. Neither of these teams should be playing in the same division. But they are, and they would probably both beat UNT right now. What I saw among these small, slow players what acute awareness of where their teammates were, what the plays where, and obvious evidence of practice to execute.