The New Arena Affect: Nebraska

Submitted by superstringer on

A couple years ago I posted something about the effect of a new arena on a MBB team -- it dramatically and demonstrably increases that team's winning. I had studied the annual records of Staee, OSU, and Wiscy. Each of them had middling records prior to each of their new hoops arenas, then within 2-3 years of opening Breslin/VCA/Kohl, a dramatic uptick in annual wins occurred. Staee was the perfect test case -- Heathcote was the coach for years before and after Breslin opened, so the difference certainly had a lot to do with the new arena. OSU was the opposite; I think Ayres was let go right about the time VCA opened. But there was no question, the new arena really helped the overall record for each team.

UM could be said also to benefit from the "remade" new arena, as our team's competitiveness has increased around the same time as the "new" arena. Obviously Coach B's growing influence has a lot to do with that. But you can sell your team to recruits based on the soon to be opened arena, and I would think Mitch and GRIII could well be part of the benefits of the remodeling (at least indirectly -- a recruit can have confidence in a program's legitimacy by having a spankin' kickbutt arena). Another team you can say also is benefitting from remodeled arena is Iowa -- had been really bad for years, Carver-Hawkeye got a multimillion remodelling job in 2011, and now a couple years later the team is getting much more competitive.  Again, however, the contemporaneous coaching change makes this a less-than-perfect test case.

So now we have Nebraska as the new example. Last year, watching them, I said that they were 2 years away from being ranked, given their new arena opening and their new coach. I'm still thinking I was right. They are a BITCH to play in Lincoln now; they just can't play on the road, yet. But at some point next year, they could well be 10-1 or 11-2 or something and get ranked, and then end up 9-9ish in the B1G.

Am I making this up, or would anyone agree that the new arena in Lincoln is going to help create a Minnesota-ishly quasi-dangerous MBB team over the next few years.  And what's that say about the future competitiveness of Illinois, Purdue, PSU, etc., who are stuck in old arenas.

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Tater

February 7th, 2014 at 12:45 PM ^

Tom Izzo had the once-fertile Detroit, Flint and Saginaw recruiting areas to himself for about twelve years due to using negative recruiting to leverage the Chirs Webber/Ed Martin scandal.  In all that time, he "amassed" as many NCAA Championhips as Steve Fisher did after six games: one.

I don't know if new facilities win games, but old facilities that are allowed to deteriorate can definitely affect recruiting.  I think the best effect the Breslin Center had was to help Sparty lock up all of the MHSAA semis and finals.  Having the Breslin Center be a goal at the beginning of the season for instate recruits certainly can't hurt Sparty's recruiting.

I see facilitles upgrades as necessary, and failure to do so as negligence for any serious athletic program.  If your facilities suck, it becomes harder to recruit.  All an upgrade does is catch you up with everyone else.

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jmblue

February 7th, 2014 at 12:55 PM ^

Part of it is related to an uptick in recruiting around this time.  Flashy facilities make recruiting an easier sell.

BTW, PSU doesn't play in an old arena.  The Bryce-Jordan Center was built in the '90s.  

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MH20

February 7th, 2014 at 1:53 PM ^

PSU made a mistake when they built that arena -- it's too big!  The BJC seats way too many people for a sport that is largely ignored by the State College faithful.  According to kenpom, the capacity is 15,261.  For reference, that is roughly 2500 more seats than the Crisler Center (12,721).

I know that bigger is better and all that, but I really think PSU would benefit from a smaller, Cameron Indoor-type arena.  Now obviously they won't have the kind of crowd that you'll find in Durham, however a more intimate setting with more fans closer to the floor would make that place harder to play.  As it stands, it has to be the most stale environment in the B1G, including Northwestern.

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LSAClassOf2000

February 7th, 2014 at 11:10 AM ^

You know, a lot of studies get done surrounding product or facility newness and purchase behavior (e.g., selling more tickets, in the case of sports), but I don't think there's ever been a really good, formal study of the effect of new facilities on team performance. I would think there might be some analogies between the two aspects, with team performance being eventually improved - at least in the short term (I bet it is variable for teams too). As someone mentioned above, of course, this also feeds into recruiting and the bump in the quality of that, so there would definitely be confounding factors. Coaches and the likeability thereof probably would be a major confounding factor too. 

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Raoul

February 7th, 2014 at 11:13 AM ^

At Michigan, I think the building of the practice facility has been just as important—if not more important—for attracting recruits than the renovation of Crisler itself. For example, the new concourses and entrances are great for fans but have little impact on prospects coming for visits, who are more interested in the practice and training facilities, locker rooms, etc.

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swan flu

February 7th, 2014 at 11:21 AM ^

Correlation =/= Causation.

 

Edit- also, Purdue invested nearly $100 million into the Mackey Arena, the project finished two years ago. And they're terrible.

 

Your choice of teams as examples exhibit typical confirmation bias. I hypothesize that there is no causation between arena investment and team performance, but I'd have to analyze a lot of statistics to confirm or deny.

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dc22

February 7th, 2014 at 11:38 AM ^

I would think that a new/ remodeled arena might not improve team performance in and of itself. If this improvement were a part of a greater emphasis placed on the program on the part of the university - better training/ practice facilities, higher paid coaches/ assistants etc. - I could see it have a positive impact on team performance.

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