Oregon's matchup with Arizona State on Saturday is the final game at 84-year-old McArthur Court, the nation's second oldest on-campus arena. Helping us say goodbye to one of college basketball's most historic gyms is Mirjam Swanson, an Oregon alum who now works as a sports writer at The Riverside Press-Enterprise.
Yo, Mac Court!
We haven't talked like this in a while, nor have I ever before spoken to you - inanimate structure that you are - publicly.
But, shoot.
I'm going to miss you. And I always will love you.
... and I'll wonder, aloud, how many other sports reporters Mac Court might have spawned since it opened in 1927?
Wonder how many other young punks got a hit of the white-hot energy ricocheting around that cozy building, reverberating off the wood, the metal, the flesh, and let it infect them, let it influence the rest of their lives?
Wonder how many of us might have ended up doing (or at least covering) something actually significant - and I was starting to drift that way as a freshman at the University of Oregon - if it weren't for Mac Court?
If it weren't for all the fun we had inside that greying, old shoebox of a gym across the street from the cemetery?
What if, in 1997, Oregon hadn't upset UCLA, 87-85, in OT there? I wouldn't have watched my friends disappear into the rush of humanity on the bright floor below, thinking that what I was witnessing was one of the most beautiful scenes I'd seen, smiling about it for days - or, OK, for years -- afterward.
What if, a few weeks later, the Oregon women's team hadn't almost upset third-ranked Stanford in front of several thousand, thwarted in large part by the Cardinal's charismatic point guard, who was so impressive leading her team out of The Pit that I looked her up at work that night when I got tired of filing microfilm at the Knight Library?
Oh, I was officially so over public policy and politics.
So, Mac Court, I've gotten to know the Whisky and the Roxy in Hollywood pretty well since last we talked.
I like them because they remind me of you: They give people a stage to show what they're made of. And sometimes, on special nights, the energy in those famous old clubs is as intoxicating as it regularly was within the imposing, tightly closing walls at Mac Court.
But I get it: Oregon's fancy now.
Times have changed. The hoops programs aren't nearly as exciting; apparently there hasn't been a sell-out since the 2007-08 season. (Consider: The women's team sold out the 9,087-capacity joint the year I covered them.)
And nothing I loved about you, Mac Court, had to do with comfort. Happiness was the permanently cramped seating on press row, the cold stairwells in which I did almost all of my interviews with Ducks basketball players, the fact that a simple hole-punch could validate your ticket and get you into the already way overstuffed student section.
Oregon, apparently, is officially so over that kind of thing.
Duke might be cool with Cameron Indoor, Stanford still is fine with Maples and Notre Dame sees no problem with playing its football games at the House that Rockne Built.
Oregon had a facility that was that kind of special, that kind of magical, that kind of asset. But what good is playing in the second-oldest on-campus basketball arena in all the land when last week's uniforms are old news?
It's tough to feel connected to Oregon athletics when so much of my experience as a Duck covering the Ducks, and as a young reporter learning how to cover sports people, had to do with Mac Court, the gleaming, grey building at which I'd nod every morning on the way to class.
Yep, I'd nod and say hello, and that beautiful old basketball arena would smile back and speak to me of what there was to be accomplished, and how much fun it would be.
Peace out, Mac Court. Thanks for everything.
Selita Ebanks Michael Michele Marisa Tomei Shannyn Sossamon Rachael Leigh Cook
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