NT Daily: University officials looking to upgrade Super Pit

[Keith7]

I'd just be happy if they took down the "coliseum" sign and officially called it the Super Pit.

[FirefightnRick]

Want to know where we need to spend some money? Well here it is.

I've maintained for a year now this is where we can make some progress and carve a niche for ourselves. We have one of the best coaches in the Nation and in only her second year just knocked off the 7th ranked team in the country in Baylor. There's only one other D1 softball team in the metroplex, a metroplex that is possibly one of the hottest locations for softball talent in the country. These girls have to piss in a trailer at Lovelace and I believe have to come dressed to he park? So this should be where we concentrate some funding and give Coach Kee what she needs to get us on the national scene.

NATION MEET NORTH TEXAS: #MGSB just upset #7 Baylor in Waco, 1-0! HC Tracey Kee making program waves in year two! pic.twitter.com/LeBE4Y4WQC

— Mean Green Softball (@MeanGreenSB)

February 21, 2015

[GrandGreen]

Yes against the Mustangs in 1976 (If I remember correctly) Great atmosphere with mostly NTSU fans. Actually had folks standing all around the arena trying to see.

Edit: Didn't see the exact date that CMJ posted. Was the 76-77 season

I actually ending up setting on the steps to see this one. A little history on the game and why it was a sell out. Sonny Allen was the SMU coach who was known for his "run and gun" syle. NT was of course at the top of their game with Blakeley. Anyway, there was a big article in the Dallas papers; with a big headline "What makes Sonny run" or something like that. This article was all about SMU no longer scheduling NT in basketball citing the usually bs reasons. A lot of free publicity for what would have been a highly attented game anyway.

[NM Green]

As for the renovation just look at the before and after pics of The Pit in Albuquerque. They did a great job of preserving the magic that is the Pit while modernizing the exterior and creating an inviting allure. Get rid of the outdated dark wall structures and enclose the structure in glass. Put up prints of players, statues or sculptors depicting athletic greatness. Sure we don't have the history or success of a UNM, but we long for that type of impact as we look to the future. I also want to see a permanent bar structure inside the Superpit ,similar to the Jack Daniels bar at UNLV. That bar rocks as a place to meet before the game and at halftime. I do like the televisions with games on it, but have multiple games playing on different tv's. Immerse the Superpit fan in college basketball while they are there to take in the game. I also think enhanced lighting throughout the corridors will be an improvement.

GMG

[Cooley]

I actually ending up setting on the steps to see this one. A little history on the game and why it was a sell out. Sonny Allen was the SMU coach who was known for his "run and gun" syle. NT was of course at the top of their game with Blakeley. Anyway, there was a big article in the Dallas papers; with a big headline "What makes Sonny run" or something like that. This article was all about SMU no longer scheduling NT in basketball citing the usually bs reasons. A lot of free publicity for what would have been a highly attented game anyway.

I think I remember that GrandGreen! I expected a record crowd and got there early (As I usually do anyway) I also wanted to see my high school rival, Ira Terrell (Dallas Roosevelt) They beat us out our senior year and went on to win the state championship. I think he still holds the state championship record with 47 points in a championship game.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sports/college-sports/smu-mustangs/20120517-basketball-star-terrell-to-be-enshrined-with-five-others-tonight-in-smu-athletic-hall-of-fame.ece

[meangreenbob]

I actually ending up setting on the steps to see this one. A little history on the game and why it was a sell out. Sonny Allen was the SMU coach who was known for his "run and gun" syle. NT was of course at the top of their game with Blakeley. Anyway, there was a big article in the Dallas papers; with a big headline "What makes Sonny run" or something like that. This article was all about SMU no longer scheduling NT in basketball citing the usually bs reasons. A lot of free publicity for what would have been a highly attented game anyway.

I was there too. My date and I sat on the last row at the top. The place was packed. People were indeed sitting on the steps. It was standing room only. The atmosphere was second to none. I wish others who have walked down the corridor of years could have or might one day be able to experience that Big Time atmosphere at the Super Pit for North Texas Basketball.

What I remember most was the noise. It was deafening. Maybe the sound was rising to the top of the Pit, I don't know, but it really didn't subside much at halftime. I remember walking out exit D after the game and the first thing I noticed was the quietness. I think that night damaged my hearing.

Maybe it will happen again? Maybe one day.

[meangreenbob]

I would get a bid on having the decorative concrete that is on the wall along the walkway separating the lower and upper bowls removed. It may look nice but it takes up way too much space and makes an already narrow walkway even more restricted even when entertaining smaller crowds.

Edited February 24, 2015 by meangreenbob

[UNTLifer]

I agree FFR, but this article is not about upgrades to Loveless.

This article is about the Super Pit. Where would you like to see upgrades at the Super Pit? What would you propose?

My question was in response to your post that said:

"Unless they are taken out of context some of the ideas and suggestions mentioned in that article which we should spend money on to improve our basketball program are truly some of the dumbest things I've ever read."

Edited February 24, 2015 by UNTLifer

[GMG24]

See smus changes, lighting, video boards, LRs, we need more of an exterior lift than they, definitely re do lighting outside the Pit, two ticket booths 3 windows each on both sides.... Close other two entrances down, create a huge open look as soon as you walk in. Create those spots as some walk up standing room pavilions... I'm thinking big, go big or go home RIGHT?? Oh and for the love, scrap the 40 inch screens that have been there since I played elementary ball.. They're tough to see, go big and put up two massive screens that hold stats etc for each team, and play video reviews/commercials/ advertisements.

Now. How about that for some upgrades? Should only cost 7-8 mill surely the big donors can foot that bill

[GMG24]

Hmmm where did I go wrong lol

[KRAM1]

Hmmm where did I go wrong lol

Don't know...wasn't me, but perhaps it was the suggestion to let someone else do it that infects so much of the UNT fan base these days. Just guessing of course. Wasn't me for sure. I save my -1's for the truly deserving. Ha!

[GMG24]

Haha I will gladly give money to the university.... Above the pennies I scrape right now, just as soon as I get the mound of student debt off my back... I love UNT and I want every program to be successful! I really want to be the texas version of Boise State! We have the facilities, and the ones we lack, are on the docket to be upgraded, or at least talked about. Hope Tony B can get this thing turned around. I miss good basketball around here.. I've missed the last few games, but plan on making the trip up there Thursday and Saturday.

[UNTLifer]

I agree FFR, but this article is not about upgrades to Loveless.

This article is about the Super Pit. Where would you like to see upgrades at the Super Pit? What would you propose?

My question was in response to your post that said:

"Unless they are taken out of context some of the ideas and suggestions mentioned in that article which we should spend money on to improve our basketball program are truly some of the dumbest things I've ever read."

The silence is deafening.

[TheWestie]

Ok, time for The Westie to chime in. (thanks for the shout-out GolfinGomez!)

The Pit will be fine with a little upgrade. The major things that need to be done can't be done because it isn't a dedicated athletics facility.

The stands need to be closer to the floor with a steeper grade to the stands allowing everyone to be closer to the action. This would also eliminate a lot of the lighting problems. Of course this will never happen because the university wouldn't be able to use the Pit for other things (like the always important cheerleader competitions).

None of this would fix the lighting problems in the Super Pit/UNT Coliseum.

Note that I used two names for the building. That's because athletics calls it The Super Pit but the rest of the University calls it the UNT Coliseum. those are the official names depending on if you're athletics or not. The Denton Record-Chronicle also makes that distinction. You go see the Mean Green basketball team in The Super Pit but you go to high school graduations at the UNT Coliseum. This is one of the first things that could be fixed. Just call it the damn Super Pit. Have a big thing inside when you go in explaining what the hell it means and the connection to the Snake Pit.

The lighting sucks because the Super Pit just has flood lights over the court. Besides being dim and not putting out a large amount of light, the look of the light sucks. It's flat, ugly, and the color is horrible. The actual lights are a mix of several types of flood lights (if you look up next time you'll see a ring of square-shaped flood lights and a few circular lights.) You can see the playing surface lights in this photo below. (Not my picture.)

You can see how the lights for the playing surface are one color and the other, older flood lights that illuminate the seating area, are green. This makes a truly hideous color combo for photo and video. You can also see how the playing surface lights are not much brighter than the seating flood lights.
I wouldn't be surprised to see the lightning being upgraded well before anything else happens.

Ok so for those of you who weren't around in the early 70s when the Pit was built, the way it was built prevents any re-angling of the seats or anything like that.

Here's a scan from the 1972? Yucca showing the Super Pit under construction.

The beams that hold up the seating area are integral to holding the building up and can't just be made steeper. In this next picture you can see how they integrate with the walls.

Those angled concrete beams go all the way down to the arena floor. If you go into the big storage room near the North Tunnel you can see how they hold most of the building together. And where the seating area stops now is as close as it's gonna get. The court itself goes right up to the corners of the floor where it curves around and there's not much room to get around as it is. The way they have integrated the risers behind the court seats is about as good as it might get. But you can't do that in all the corners because there has to be room for staff etc. to get around the arena floor during the game.

Something nobody else has talked about is that I don't think the Super Pit is not ADA compliant. The only way to get to the arena flood is to go through one of the tunnels form the outside of the building. The entrance from North Texas Blvd has steps before you get into the old gymnastics room and the big steps from that room up into the arena floor level. There is no elevator anywhere in the building. It was built pre-ADA and so I guess is grandfathered but that is something that would make a huge difference. Where the hell they could find space inside to put it though is beyond me. Has anyone used the Raquetball courts in the recent past? How much use do the classrooms get outside of athletics use?

According to this 1973? Yucca page, budget cuts while construction was already underway is why there are no ticket booths/windows at the Super Pit. They also said "The Man" didn't want concerts at the Super Pit despite it being built to with that in mind.

The University makes a butt-load of money from renting the Super Pit out for those multi-day cheerleading competitions and UIL dance competitions. Not to mention the three or four weeks SOLID of regional high school graduations, with several a day. All that stuff were other reasons that people were mentioning for building the convention center over at the Hill next to Apogee. Thousands of people coming to Denton and to campus for that stuff could stay right there. Have a cheerleading trade show at the convention center or additional practice/warmup space there. The fact that they booked the Super Pit for one of those things then still scheduled the women to play at home there is beyond dumb.

As for what NMGreen said about how New Mexico renovated The Pit in ABQ, it looks like what the did with the superstructure around the arena was a lot simpler than what we could do. The ABQ Pit looks like it is sunken into the ground with all the seating below the concourse/ground level and the structure around it could be easily rebuilt. At The Super Pit, the seating rises high up inside the outside structure nearly to the roof. Having spent a lot of time up in the catwalks of the Super Pit I can tell ya, the roof is only about 12-15 feet above the catwalk.

I would love to take those two entrances that have been closed off and remove the doors and turn those into a pair of ticket offices. Or make one entrance into a ticket office and turn the other into a Team Shop like in Apogee where it's accessible from inside and outside the arena. But the Super Pit has really great bones. The Terrazo flooring is still in really great condition all through the concourse level and there aren't any huge falling apart glaring problems with it right now as far as structurally and architecturally. Of all the Brutalist style architecture buildings on campus built in the 70's (I'm looking a you GAB) the Super Pit and Willis still hold up the best. It still looks relatively modern and when they power-washed it about 10 years back it really made a difference. It's an example of that style of building which was done well and there are absolutely aspects of it's design that deserve to be preserved. They need to power-wash the interior where decades of hands have stained the concrete on the walls and the floors in the seating area. They need to paint or modernize a lot of the concourse area though. It does look very 70s-brown/beige dated.


Also remember that The Super Pit had ORANGE seats until around 2000. 27 years before we got green seats.

Edited February 26, 2015 by TheWestie

[TheWestie]

But if we talk about Super Pit renovations, there is something that we also have to talk about that will make The Super Pit a complete modern D1 arena.

Our team locker rooms.

I can't find a photo of what the actual locker rooms look like now but this is what the player's lounges looks like. Think this but with wooden lockers.

Here are what our CUSA brethren are working with.

UAB:

Marshall:

Western Kentucky:

Can't find a wide shot but the the Hilltoppers have a big round locker room that looks just like Louisville's. You can see a 360 view here.

The Ponies down the street have new fancy player facilities for bball since they rebuilt Moody and the Frogs down the other street are getting a big new round purple locker room too to match their Big 12 status as they renovate. This is all the kind of stuff that makes 18 year old kids go "WOW I WANNA GO HERE".

[greenminer]

Good stuff, Westie.

I'm almost positive the seats were changed by Fall 1999. That is when I transferred to Denton and I don't remember them being orange at all.

[untjim1995]

Great post, Westie....

The orange seats were here until Trilli's second season as coach. He went out and secured the funds to get the seats green, IIRC.Trilli also painted some rooms in the Super Pit (maybe the locker room or a coaches room?) and would go and talk to any community group anytime. He was magnetic that way with people and getting stuff done.

He also was a terrible basketball coach and sunk us into a hole that took years to dig out of.

Recruiters are often that way as a head coach--they are people-oriented, but the x's and o's often suffer badly...

[TheWestie]

I got here in 2003 so I don't know exactly what year the green seats were put in. That's why I said "around 2000."

[UNTFan23]

The lighting sucks because the Super Pit just has flood lights over the court. Besides being dim and not putting out a large amount of light, the look of the light sucks. It's flat, ugly, and the color is horrible. The actual lights are a mix of several types of flood lights (if you look up next time you'll see a ring of square-shaped flood lights and a few circular lights.) You can see the playing surface lights in this photo below. (Not my picture.)

You can see how the lights for the playing surface are one color and the other, older flood lights that illuminate the seating area, are green. This makes a truly hideous color combo for photo and video. You can also see how the playing surface lights are not much brighter than the seating flood lights.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the lightning being upgraded well before anything else happens.

The floods over the court are Metal Halide lamps. Metal Halide are popular with sports stadiums/arenas due to the "pure white" light they produce. However with age the bulbs produce less light and the color output changes. About half of the court lights are nearing their end of life and really all lamps should be replaced at the same time to guarantee even light output and color.

The high bay lights over the seats are a mixture of fluorescent and Mercury Vapor lamps. Mercury Vapor lamps are best known for their blueish-greenish they emit. Color corrected Mecury Vapor lights produce a slightly better whitish light but it's not as good as Metal Halide lamps.

[FirefightnRick]

So the NT Daily spoke out against Rock Concerts being allowed in the Super Pit?

Interesting.

Rick

[Ben Gooding]

So the NT Daily spoke out against Rock Concerts being allowed in the Super Pit?

Interesting.

Rick

Do what? Why would they not want more people at or around North Texas? I swear man, only at North Texas. "Whatever it takes to not change" should be our slogan.

[NM Green]

Everything wrong in the wimorld is north Texas' fault. Isis. Unt's lack of vision. Iranian nukes, Mean Green seeds a planting. Takeover if Crimea, I see Ricks distraction with incarnate word as the culprit.

Just nut it up and show at the Suoer Pit tomorrow. I don't care what they call it in Bruce Clark west or Kerr halls. It's the Super Pit on Saturday and old dominion is the fod that will be feasted on.

GMG

[Army of Dad]

So the NT Daily spoke out against Rock Concerts being allowed in the Super Pit?

Interesting.

Rick

I don't think I would want to go to a rock concert there. That place is LOUD when you get some sound in it. If you put a rock band in there people would be leaving with their ears bleeding.The Texas Tech game was one of the louder sports games I've ever experienced in person.

[Ben Gooding]

Dial down the speakers a tad and problem solved. UNT should be open to ANYTHING that puts people, particularly people unfamiliar with UNT, on campus.

I mean for heaven sake UNT is/was open in letting a transsexual come and talk to students (about transsexual stuff?). A rock concert though, oh no, nooooot that.

[FirefightnRick]

They were fine with any other kind of noise-inducing event, just not Rock.

Rick