The soldier field renovation was the biggest mistake Chicago ever made. At a 61,000 capacity, it’s essentially the smallest stadium in the NFL. AND - it’s cold. If you’re a free agent QB or wide receiver, it’s a terrible destination, knowing you will have to play at least 8 games in the elements. Massive mistake. I think it hurts the Bears financially and competitively. I went to many bears games in college and a ton of Texans games where I live now in Houston, and I can tell you, the fan experience is much better indoors. A December bears game vs. a December Texans game are night and day. When you watch the Bears game on TV, you forget how miserable all the media timeouts are in-person.

Good for Indianapolis for coming up with a plan... but if they are going to limit fan capacity, I wish they would play it at the pacers stadium over Lucas Oil. If you want to dig deep over why we didn’t beat Michigan in the final four, you can look no deeper than having to play in the Alamo Dome. Yes, it’s true that Mo Wagner beat is, but if you look at statistics, it was the venue that truly beat us. Michigan won on Wagner dominating us from the inside. Loyola’s offense was predicated on winning with the long ball. We shot .38 from three vs. Miami. We shot .40 from three vs. Tennessee. We shot .38 from 3 against Nevada. We shot .50 from three vs. Kansas State. We were firing from all cylinders from 3 in NBA arenas, and averaging over .40 with the long ball.


I was in the nosebleeds at the Alamo dome for the Final Four. It was like no other basketball game I’ve ever seen. I had to watch a majority of the game on the bigscreen. We hit .10 from three against Michigan. There’s no way you can tell me the depth perception at the Alamo Dome didn’t have a major impact on our team, who averaged 7.4 threes per game that year at a 35% clip, didn’t struggle because of the unorthodox environment. We hit only 10 percent! 1-10! I understand you can have bad games, but that’s a serious statistical discrepancy.

I understand everyone has the same obstacle, but when you’re a mid major team that depends on threes to neutralize the larger talent of the P-5 schools, it’s a difference maker. I still would love to hear from Ingram, Custer, Richardson, and Townes about how they felt shooting in such a cavernous venue in that game. It had to be a major factor. Had we shot 4 for 10 from three, that Michigan game comes down to the last 30 seconds....

I think depth perception in venues plays a big part in 3-point shooting. It’s the reason I hope we have a food relationship with Bulls, and send Cooper, Kennedy, Hall, Norris Clemons, and Williamson down to the United Center for some shoot around time the week before Arch Madness. Get them used to shooting in a bigger arena.

I preferred the original version of this sentence.

It is crazy to remember that we were just 1-10 from three in that game.

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Even crazier to think that if not for a few minutes where we couldn’t stop turning it over, we win that game even with shooting that bad. They adjusted, we didn’t, and Nova (who probably relied on outside shooting more than we did) adjusted better than anyone.

The vantage point watching that game on the first level wasn’t much better than where you were, Toledo. It was like sitting at court side level, but pushed back a few hundred feet from the court. Don’t even get me started on the sound and that buzzer.
Domes are terrible for fans and players, but fantastic for the pocketbook of the NCAA.

I was in the lower corner seats. They were a mile from the court. You really had no choice but to watch the videoboard because the sightlines were unwatchable. Next time I’ll buy Stubhub rather than chance getting seats like that through the school’s anthonytravel package.

Yes. “Next time.” I like the way you think