After attending Miami during the golden years of both football and basketball in the late 70’s, and then seeing our OOC schedule and attendance deteriorate throughout the years after Ron and Wally, I honestly never thought we’d see another crowd of 9200 plus at Millet. And now two in a row! Wonders never cease!
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Through my many years of experience with Miami hoops, which goes back to the Harper era, I’d much rather see a “House that Steele built” than any sort of aluminum bleacher added kinda con figuration of Millett Hall. Even as much as I’ve grown to love the old building, it was never built fo one purpose.
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Speaking of keeping Steele w a new Arena in the works, just read a USA Today article this morning about NCAA basketball coaches on the rise, and yes, Travis is in the article. The article highlights Miami’s turnaround under Steele and how he may be positioned for another Power conference coaching job.
Let’s hope our Starbucks CEO chips in some bucks to retain Steele! He’s given to MU basketball previously.
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Hopefully our AD is making some calls to the many CEOs who are Miami alums. Imagine the advertising opportunities to jump on board! This is mostly a Fortune 500 list. It is pretty amazing we have this many. Farmer Insurance also has Miami connections.
Disclaimer: This is a quickly created list from ChatGTP (and not manually confirmed and AI hallucinations are possible)…
Duke Energy Lynn J. Good
CST Brands Kim Lubell
James Ryan - recently retired from Sony Enterainment
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Zimmer Biomet Holdings – David C. Dvorak
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Starbucks Coffee Company – Brian Niccol (formerly CEO of Chipotle)
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Cintas Corporation – Todd Schneider
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KeyBank – Chris Gorman
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FIS – Stephanie Ferris
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McCormick & Company – Brendan Foley
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American Axle & Manufacturing (AAM) – David Dauch
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Roper Technologies – Neil Hunn
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Lippert – Jason Lippert
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Brown-Forman – Lawson Whiting
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Sally Beauty Holdings – Denise Paulonis
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Installed Building Products – Jeffrey Edwards
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Cracker Barrel – Julie Felss Masino
Any Miami alumni list that doesn’t include Mohammed Al Barwani (MB Holdings) or Dick Farmer (Cintas) is … interesting.
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What about Tina Louise? Has anyone reached out to her?
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Chrissy Taylor (BA from Miami) is the CEO of Enterprise, the car rental company. She also played field hockey at Miami.
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Considering Dick Farmer died 4.5 years ago it seems accurate to exclude…but yes could still list Scott
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Can’t forget, Ryan Graves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Graves\_(businessman)
Uber’s first employee.
The royalties from Gilligan’s Island re-runs should be worth millions.
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Mrs. Howell sounds like Count Dracula. What a move.
Adding to the the HawkTalk rabbit trail, Tina Louise made $1,500 per episode, this translates to approx $26k in 2026 dollars.
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ChatGPT living in 2017 here.
I totally understand the need for a new arena when you consider Millet needs so much upkeep to remodel
I understand the argument of limiting capacity to create more “advance” demand
But I am not sure I love a small arena. Miami students pay a big student fee for sports. 5,600 downloaded tickets for a Tuesday night 9pm game in historically cold temperatures.
I really don’t remember the double black curtains and 6400 capacity really creating a better atmosphere
I think we will still be getting 1500 in a smaller arena if we become a bad team again
Also do you want a small arena at the next conference re shuffling
Tough decisions
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This is interesting article from 6 years ago about basketball arenas in D1 so we might not want to be below 8k.
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Not to be redundantly redundant, but this will not be just a basketball arena. A university campus with approx 18,800 students must have a facility for concerts, graduations, speakers, campus events, et al. To build it with dreadful reminders of attendance of 1,000 for bball games is, hopefully, history, at least temporarily.
I understand bigger is more expensive, but it would not be prudent to build down to a small crowd. And yes, bigger costs more.Maybe a lot more. But amortize it over fifty+ years and the cost becomes more “manageable”. Further, there are ways to reduce operational costs, such as a roof covered with (as much as possible) solar panels and/or other electricity generation products.
Millett was never designed as a basketball facility. It was a multi-purpose building within which we played bball. This arena must be a bball arena. But because of budget constraints, it must be more. Red brick buildings cost more. But when was the last time we went cheap and put up grey panels? Do it right or regret it in 3 years.
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=>Jeez Louise.
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