Since the University of Kentucky is having problems recruiting quality players to their basketball program, they thought an update to Rupp Arena might help!
Yikes... maybe we can pawn "the rules" and add some glass and metal to AFH!
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/02/rupp-arena-university-kentucky-wildcats-stadium/ ↗ ↗
This is becoming like an arms race... the Cold War revisited!
@drgnslayr this Rupp fellow must have been pretty special, where did he go to college?
@drgnslayr: thanks for THAT link. What a cool idea for them to add a special practice test taking room for surrogate test takers of SATs. Even better, isn't it cool that they pulled it off without Cal knowing about it. :-)
Just joking UK fans. I was just recalling what Cal didn't know about surrogate SAT test taking at Memphis and extrapolating it in Lexington for comedy.
Joking aside, you are right about things getting competitive about infrastructure.
Nike and UK vs. adidas and KU.
It reminds me of Richard Petty and MOPAR battling Cale Yarbrough (or was it David Pearson?) and FOMOCO in stock car racing back in the 1960s.
Richard gets a 426 hemi.
Cale gets a 427 wedge.
Richard gets a Plymouth Super Bird.
Cale gets a Talladega Torino.
The only way FOMOCO and MOPAR could end it was to agree to back away from unlimited sponsorship.
Hopefully, KU will get a full allotment of goodies before Nike and adidas call it off, if this were in fact going on.
So does Cal make all these top 10 recruits sign a contract that they have to give the school 10% of their rookie contract? Or maybe to him???
Its is on ESPN now...
ESPN link to Kentucky new arena ↗
I am too old fashioned and probably in the minority, but I find it hard for an institution, whose primary charge is education, to justify spending $310M to upgrade a perfectly good arena, when there are probably tons of other education related needs at the school that will go unmet, so they can build a shrine to the squid.
More importantly, what will happen in a few years when someone at the NCAA grows a pair and decides to really investigate the squid and the true story comes out, his entire record at UK vacated and they go on probation?
Maybe something like this...
or this...
Other costly abandoned venues ↗
Absolutely sad what happened to all these venues designed to enhance China's coming out party to the world but ended up instead as gigantic "white elephant' monuments to vanity and lack of foresight. I wonder if Brazil's multi-billion investment (grossly behind schedule) will see the same fate.