Miami wants a full-service hotel next to Millett to capture the teams coming in that go to the other hotels in town. There’s nothing wrong with Marcum at all, but when this new hotel opens up Marcum will be repurposed for other university purposes.
FWIW - Any time Miami has speakers and other guests come in, they rarely stay at The Marcum even though there is plenty of occupancy there.
Tech should be at the center of whatever is built. Maybe in 100 years (or less) we will field a video game team and students will watch them play in person or remote. Sounds nuts I know but pro video game leagues already exist
Ugh…Miami was No 1 in some college gaming league a couple years ago…I believe…LOL…only know that b/c of MHT.
Yeah, Miami fielded the first ever D1 varsity Esports team while I was there. They already have some impressive accolades:
And honestly, their “facilities” inside of King and Armstrong are already impressive:
Completely agree we should be thinking forward 50 years. Too many times something cheap, but impactful to the gameday experience comes along and because of how things were built, we can’t incorporate it.
Pretty cool! I had no idea. I suppose we could just build a new stadium in the Metaverse as well and save a load of money. Ps, I know I’m old, but it’s really just the next coming of SecondLife, no?
Pretty much. From a core business perspective, it makes sense, although it’s a hail mary.
Facebook’s product is their extensive user data. Previously, their mobile app tried to track everything you did on your phone. That’s bad for Google and Apple, who own the devices and want the same user data. Google and Apple didn’t like the competition, and under the guise of privacy (let’s be honest, Apple and Google don’t give a damn about individual privacy), they made it harder for third party applications to track what you were doing on your phone. Combine that with many in Gen Z giving up Facebook for other forms of social media, and Facebook loses a lot of influence in the information game.
So if Facebook’s influence across web and mobile is dropping, where else can they collect data on people? They’re making a bet that VR is the future. If you can have anything you want in VR, Facebook will know everything you want in the physical world. Will it work? I love VR and I doubt it.
And I’ve now derailed a thread after always complaining about derailed threads 
I get an assist for derailing. Oh well. Always interesting conversations here.
for those of you who have ever gone to a Vandy football game, there is a Marriott that overlooks the stadium. Great place to stay on a game day. I’d be curious to know where Miami plans to build this hotel. I wonder if there is utility in attaching the hotel to the redone Millett Hall
I’m looking forward to the day when we get a Graduate Hotel in Oxford. Quirky and interesting hotel chain with its inns tailored to the university legacy where it is located. I enjoyed the ones I stayed at at Minnesota and at UNC.
Varsity is a bit of a misnomer as they aren’t getting funding from the athletic department, iirc it comes from the Interactive Media Studies department.
I’ve followed esports for about a decade now (though esports is a term like Olympic sports which covers a wide variety of things, I follow the general industry a bit and a couple of games in particular). It’s definitely a massively growing area but I don’t think collegiate esports will ever exist in the same model of NCAA sports now.
There’s a lot of things which make sports linked to school make sense. You need facilities, a team all needs to be able to get to the same place to practice and compete, age based competition is the norm. None of those things are true for esports. You can play online with people spread out across a continent and a 15 year old doesn’t have any disadvantages compared to a 30 year old (and might have a reaction time advantage).
Additionally competition in terms of teams representing a particular city or place and travelling to compete against another team isn’t really a thing (Activision-Blizzard was trying to get this to work with Overwatch and Call of Duty but then covid hit). Instead you generally have teams travel to a central location to compete in a tournament over the course of a weekend to a couple of weeks, more like golf or tennis.
Collegiate esports do make sense as an enrollment tool though. It’s the same reason you’ll see small schools add football to enroll a hundred guys. If you can convince students to come to your school in exchange for a couple thousand in scholarships then you come out way head from the rest of tuition. There’s a reason why there are a bunch of tiny schools with esports teams.
i’ve done Charlottesville…Columbia, SC…and will probably do the Athens, GA one in April…i really like them and they’re not too pricey either
I think it’s really cool that university students use the tables in the lobbies as study halls.
The one in C’Ville actually has a proper coffee shop too. Unfortunately COVID restrictions prevented their game room from being open. I’ll have one more shot at that next year
Jive, my bad on my original reply, I misunderstood what you were talking about. Guess there is a new infil for the fields that helps reduce heat on the field, anywhere from 10-20 degrees. Not sure how it works but guess it is the latest thing and it will installed with the new field. So the turf should be cooler during all those early season home games-all one of them.
A Dome?
Wow…just incredible that an interior renovation would cost upwards of $100 million, although I have no reason to doubt this figure based on the background given by previous posters.
But I do agree that Millett would seem to have “good bones” even though it’s exterior is a bit drab. The concourses are large and open and overall obviously it is plenty large enough to accommodate whatever arena design is warranted.
It would seem that if the basement b-ball court is sacrificed, then the playing floor could be dropped 3 meters or more allowing sideline rows to be built down to the floor. Other than that the seats are already there and the biggest part of the renovation (other than unseen infrastructural requirements), would be to make something of the open end with a R&W club/suites of some type.
Sure hope they can make it happen but first Steele needs to turn it around in the court.
I don’t believe that the sub-gym is directly below the main court.
This is correct. There are also offices for the athletic department and (N)ROTC in the basement that may prevent any lowering of the main Millett floor.
So, moving ahead with my next ill informed question: if the floor cannot be lowered, does that mean that they start with the court level as it is and then have to rebuild the seats up from there? I imagine that would be very expensive vs. dropping the floor and using existing seats among w a few new rows around the court. Not sure if they could build up on top of current concrete seating base or not…need engineers to comment on all this…where did KC Redskin go anyway? He was our “go to” facility engineer.
P.S. can you tell I was a Marketing Major?
Also AFROTC.