Pac-12 makes right call with move to T-Mobile Arena
On Friday afternoon, Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott and two corporate heavyweights announced the move of the Pac-12 tournament to the $375 million T-Mobile Arena. Scott read from a script and tossed in a lot of big words I can’t spell. The heart of the story is that the league can make more money by renting suites and club boxes, which the MGM Grand Garden Arena lacks. But it’s a good move because even if the 18,500-seat arena proves too big, capacity can be “shrunk” to, say, 14,000 by curtains that block out segments of seats. “We spent a lot of time talking about how to engage the collegiate atmosphere,” said Scott. Collegiate atmosphere? I’d say that about 5 percent of those at the Pac-12 tournament are under 25. It’s a high roll, plain and simple.
One footnote: the league better hope that Arizona doesn’t go into a basketball funk anytime soon. The new arena would be a ghost town.
