Marquee MBB games moved away from Sun Dome?

[dabull80]

"Downtown folks"? Are there people living in the bank and office buidlings that close at 5:00?

Here's an insane idea: Instead of splitting money with a downtown location that has nice seats and scoreboards, keep 100% of it on campus and use it to buy our OWN nice seats and scoreboards.

Do you have any idea how long and how many times we were going to get new scoreboards ?  Of course no one is living in the banks(just our money) but if you have a top rated basketball team coming into town I am sure alot of these folks will have dinner/drinks and then go to the game.  I am guessing but I think the thought process here is to get the business community more involved in the athletic programs at USF and there are enough high rollers in Tampa that even if you only get a couple involved that alone could buy seats and a scoreboard at the Sun Dome.

[Bull94]

"Downtown folks"? Are there people living in the bank and office buidlings that close at 5:00?

Here's an insane idea: Instead of splitting money with a downtown location that has nice seats and scoreboards, keep 100% of it on campus and use it to buy our OWN nice seats and scoreboards.

There are plenty of alums that live down here too. I'm starting to see gear all over. I have 6 buddies who would buy season tickets if we played at the palace and they all went somewhere other than USF. How many would come from St Pete and Clearwater? Much easier for them to get downtown. By the way the sundome isn't owned or operated by the school. Let them buy their own nice seats and scoreboards if they expect us to play there. I see plenty of students at the local bars in Southie, channelside, and ybor(all of which are spitting distance from the palace). If they can make it for drink specials, they can make it for a few games downtown. Imagine the recruits coming in and seeing the venues we play in. Ray Jay and the palace. Blows any venues in the rest of the state away.

[USFDan]

"Downtown folks"? Are there people living in the bank and office buidlings that close at 5:00?

Here's an insane idea: Instead of splitting money with a downtown location that has nice seats and scoreboards, keep 100% of it on campus and use it to buy our OWN nice seats and scoreboards.

People get to leave work at 5?  How do I get one of those jobs?  Except for our $10/hr receptionists nobody here leaves that early.  Besides our downtown target market is more likely to be a young to middle aged male professional who typically goes to happy hour and other sporting events at the Palace like the Lightning.  I notice a large number of downtown workers at Lightning games.  

[Guest S.  Bien]

The city, and channelside are starving.  Hockey's gone, and no one knows if or when it will return.  A lot of construction plans for the area, and the Ice Palace, Forum must show some signs of vitality in hopes of not having any of these urban construction deals fall down for concerns of traffic in that area.

If it's limited to a few games then this is a good move.  Not so much to grab fan interest in the South Tampa Area as much as providing enormous goodwill to some major powerbrokers in this area that will be indebted to USF if we can help The Forum sell more fall events and hedge their hockey bets.  If, or when hockey returns the Forum will have no need to ask for USF games.

[E.T.]

This is a good way to try to find MORE fans . . .  

[NokiaBull]

This could be a good thing and a bad thing.  Not a good idea for getting the students that don't give a $%$@ about our basketbulls to come to the game.  This past season for the Cincy game I brought three other students with me that had never attended a basketball game in their entire 3 years here.  They had a lot of fun at the game and attended the last few games with me.  Moving games may be good to get more fans (non-students and traditionally non-bull supporters) so that is the only good side I see with this.  It would also appeal to some recruits to play in such a large arena with large crowd for big games.  St. John's, UConn, Nova, Georgetown, Seton Hall, and other programs do this often.