I made my first visit to the brand-spankin’-new Matthew Knight Arena on Sunday for the women’s basketball game between the Ducks and Oregon State and came away impressed.
Compared to the 1920s-era digs of McArthur Court, everything was an upgrade. There was exponentially more legroom in the media seating area, climate control, a greater variety of concessions for fans, and, best of all, more bathrooms!
The game wasn’t too shabby either. In front of a Pacific-10-record crowd of more than 12,000 fans, Oregon pulled out an exciting 81-72 win. It was, aside from a strange “administrative technical foul” assessed to Oregon before the game even began, pretty much a perfect event.
But, across the country, only one thing from the first week of Knight Arena’s young existence made real news.
The playing floor.
The Kilkenny Floor, created in part to pay tribute to Oregon’s 1939 “Tall Firs” national championship team, elicited a wide range of responses. There was some praise, some apathy and plenty of disgust.
Personally, I’m somewhat fond of the floor, except for the lack of a visible mid-court line. But in the grand scheme of things, for the University administration, I don’t believe that really matters.
What does matter, for those at the top of the Oregon athletic hierarchy, is that people are talking. Talking about Oregon basketball. And let’s be honest — given the state of the Pac-10 and the state of the Oregon basketball program (both the men’s and women’s teams), nobody would be talking about the Ducks if it weren’t for that floor. The opening of the new arena would have only been a minor blip on the radar.
That brings me to my larger point of what I believe the unwritten mission statement of Oregon athletics as a whole to be:
“Winning is important. Graduating our student-athletes is important. And, if there’s any way to get people talking about us beyond on-field performance, let’s make sure to do that.”
It all starts at the top. Remember the Nike ad that aired a few years back that featured Charles Barkley famously stating, “I’m not a role model”?
Well, that ad generated plenty of controversy, but it got people talking. It’s still one of the most discussed television advertisements ever. That couldn’t have hurt sales.
In its own way, the Oregon athletic department pulled a similar stunt with the floor. A couple other schools do have ‘artwork’ on the court (Texas A&M, Colorado State), but few, if any universities, have images that are so blatantly visible.
There are plenty of other ways to pay tribute to the 1939 championship team. Yet, despite the fact that many find the floor visually unsettling and the faint mid-court line creates potential problems, it seems like the floor is here to stay.
That attitude is pervasive in other parts of the athletic department as well. Take the Ducks’ football uniforms. In college football, where jerseys often stay the same for generations and are the keepsake of sacred tradition, Oregon’s uniforms change by the game.
Because the football program has been so successful lately, you hear more about the actual players and on-field successes, but if the team was losing, people would still talk about it. Because of the jerseys.
Now, I don’t mean this as another attack on the Oregon athletic department. There’s certainly a commitment to be the best in all sports, and that’s admirable. You don’t hear many rumors of gross improprieties, and it seems to be a professional operation.
It’s just that, more than any other school in the country, Oregon’s athletic department does things to get noticed. Whether it be the Knight court, the jerseys, a “Joey Heisman” billboard, etc. … well, it’s hard for people to forget about the Ducks, that for certain.
And it’s not a bad thing, necessarily. It’s just the way the Ducks do business.
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