Review: "New" Thompson-Boling Arena
I kinda miss the orange seats.
I’ve now been to two exhibition and seven or eight regular season games at the newly renovated Thompson-Boling Assembly Center and Arena on the campus of the University of Tennessee.
They spent something like $18 million on this year’s renovations, just a fraction of what it would cost to build a new place to play basketball. The goal was an pro-style arena. A lot of people would agree that they’ve achieved that look.
And to some of us, that’s the problem.
The luxury boxes will enhance the revenue stream, and I think everyone agreed that the hanging 4-sided scoreboard was a badly needed improvement. The black seats do add an air of “intimidation”, I suppose, except that the effect changes when people sit in them.
Let’s start at the beginning. There will be another phase of renovations that should improve the outside of the buliding — notably the electronic display boards facing traffic on Newland Drive. There’s really no changes to speak of this year on the outside, with of course the addition of the Pratt Practice Facility on the corner being a notable exception.
When you enter the building, there are now contract security people from CSC (you’ve seen their yellow “event staff” shirts all over the country). They seem to be everywhere — perhaps overkill, but it’s hard to fault the arena management from wanting to make people safe. Once you raise your arms and they search you, you’re ready to present your ticket. No more stub tearing! Hand-held scanners read your ticket’s barcode to make sure it’s valid and to record your attendance. These scanners will be used for the Arena’s entertainment events as well as athletics; in fact, they should begin appearing soon all over town, including the Clarence Brown Theatre (although the supporting equipment has not yet been installed.) The scanners are a win-win type thing.
The arena concourses were advertised to be improved, with better graphics. Well, I have noticed new paint, new acoustical panels to cut down the noise in the hallways, and a very slight re-do of the concession stands. I suppose the “new graphics” refer to the signs indicating the aisle to the various sections, which are indeed attractive and informative. Otherwise, the concourses are sterile. There are a few posters around commemorating benefactors or past student athletes, but they are very few and far between. Perhaps they just ran out of time on the concourse work. Slowly, nice graphics have indeed been installed along the concourses and at the entrances, including pictures of past moments, former coaches, etc. They’re nice! As for the concession stands, they pretty much offer the same food, but one thing is greater — the prices.
Make your way inside for bigger change. Especially if you arrive early, the biggest change is the seating. Gone is the sea of signature orange seats. It’s now “Big Black Country”. The argument was that black seats look more professional and intimidating, and, although UT officials never said it, the implication was that the orange seats looked cheap and “hokey”. In fact, someone said if you didn’t look at the name on the scoreboard, you would think that you were in an NBA arena.
And I think that bothers me. Do we really want to have an anonymous NBA-style arena? Or do we want “Big Orange Country”? Even past foes such as Diana Taurasi said that in giving up the orange seats, we’d lost something that gave us an edge, something to get in opponents’ heads.
And there’s something else. Most of the time, there won’t be just a field of black seats — there will be some people sitting in them. If it’s a full house, it doesn’t much matter what color the seats are — they disappear. But when it’s less than full, the empty black seats become an extension of the old Buzz Peterson-era black curtains — it’s obvious that people aren’t there. With the orange seats, you still had your school color filling in, at a much lower contrast, as the seats were the same color as the clothing most fans were wearing. And worse, when you have intermittent seating — five or six fans here, a couple of empty black seats there, you have the unfortunate orange and black color scheme. Halloween. A very bad combination, and anathema to traditional Vol fans. It’s just plain ugly.
So it’s official — in my book, the black seats are a mistake.
OK, to the scoreboard. As noted above, the former scheme of video boards at opposite high corners with small scoreboards at the other two opposite high corners wasn’t very good at all. A large four-sided scoreboard hanging over the court was a very needed improvement. I think implementation of that concept is mixed. Each side of the scoreboard is composed of multiple video displays. At the top and bottom are circular displays that, unsurprisingly, often feature graphics that often “travel” around. These look really good, and are reakkt bright.
Right above the bottom circle are the scoreboards themselves — these are all digital graphics. Unfortunately, they have a “cramped” feeling to them — the numbers seem to close together, and there’s just not enough borders around them. Although it’s cool that they include logos of each team above their score, I just couldn’t recall from that what UT-Chattanooga’s logo looked like until they later showed the logo on the bigger video screen. (It’s a train). On the scoreboard, it was just smudged graphics — looked a bit like a tornado, but I knew that wasn’t right.
The largest part of the scoreboard array is the video display, used for a combination of computer graphics and traditional video images such as promotional messages and instant replays. These units were to be the centerpiece of the scoreboard, but they’re just disappointing. For one thing, they’re not as big as I was expecting. Although published reports said the experience for fans should be comparable to viewing a 52-inch plasma TV in one’s home, to me, they recalled my first 12-inch Sony. A nice set, but it’s a good thing I lived in a small apartment. This last was written from the viewpoint of my superlative view from my Section 315 season tickets — from the lower level, the video looks much bigger.
Worse, however — the picture on those screens just isn’t very good. Now, I’ve heard that for now some of the scoreboard may be operating on only half brightness — maybe that’s the reason for the poor quality. But it’s odd that the image on the old corner video displays is of better contrast and higher color saturation than the new ones.
There is another problem as well. Perhaps this will be rectified in “Phase 2″, but live and instant replay camera feeds view with a correct 4:3 aspect ratio on the old corner display units. When shown on the new screens, these images are stretched to a wide-screen 16:9 aspect, so the pixels are stretched to the horizontal. The result is that things looked squashed. This is especially problematic when showing, for example, the UT Dance Team going through a routine. On the new display screens, these young ladies look a little pudgy, when they are anything but! It’s just not fair…
Hopefully, this distortion will be fixed with video camera upgrades, but it’s unfortunate that the first exposure fans have of the new displays is flawed in this way.
Rising more above, we see the various championship and other banners hanging from the rafters. No, they didn’t just rehang the old ones. They recreated them in giant size with unifying backgrounds. They also hung them in a square, rather than in rows. Unfortunately, the size and configuration of the banners makes it nearly impossible to see all of them from most seats. The banners are just too big. They’re also too complex for my tastes. Championship banners should be simple and understated.
OK, moving to the top. The ceiling is painted black. I have no quarrels at all with that — I think it’s great! OK, there’s one more area, the rafters — the steelwork holding up the roof, catwalks, HVAC pipes, etc. These are still off-white, although the paint is peeling at places. Perhaps painting this is another Phase 2 item, but especially with the ceiling painted black, the rafters look really bad and standout rather than staying out of they way as they should. The should be painted black as well.
I haven’t been in the loges or luxury boxes, but they look very impressive from the outside. I did recently watch a football game from the Club Level at Neyland Stadium (and enjoyed it a lot, even though I felt quite out of place) — if the amenities at Thomposon-Boling are anything like those, those with money should be quite comfortable there.
Overall, the renovations should provide a better experience for those attending events at Thompson-Boling Arena. With some more attention to a few details, it can be even better. But I do miss the orange seats.
