NCAA Basketball Arena Nomenclature

Most sports travellers who chase NCAA basketball venues use the number 353 as their goal - one arena for each of the Division I men's schools. That number will rise to 357 next season with four more colleges jumping up to Division I basketball. For me, however, there are even more arenas to consider. Several schools have their women play at an on-campus gym, while the men use a much larger facility off campus. Marquette is a perfect example: the men play at Fiserv Forum, while the women remain on campus at Al McGuire Center, which has all the history for both programs. Last year I visited both and enjoyed the latter more as a college venue. Seton Hall is another: the women play at Walsh Gymnasium, while the men are almost always at the Prudential Center in Newark. I was fortunate to catch the men playing at Walsh a couple of years ago, so I won't need to revisit to see a women's game. There are 20 schools with separate facilities for women's basketball across the country and I include those on my list.

There are also 11 schools that split men's games between two arenas. Usually, these are an on-campus venue and a larger one nearby, such as Madison Square Garden for St. John’s and XL Center for UConn, while a few others actually use two different venues on campus, with Northern Arizona (Walkup Skydome, Rolle Activity Center) one example. When you count them all (357+20+11), you end up with 388 (thanks to Wikipedia for making this relatively easy despite some inaccuracies). That is more than triple the number of venues in Club 123, and more than double the number found in minor league baseball, which is 160 at the moment. And that number will only grow as more schools transition to Division I.

So you are probably wondering if I am going to try to make this my next quest. As much as I would like to, I’m well past my traveling prime and no longer made of money and time. It is unlikely that I would be able to get to every one, and so this will never be an official SportsRoadTrips quest. It doesn't mean I'm not going to try to visit as many as possible, but I'm not going to go out of the way to do so. One of the problems is that schedules do not line up very often for schools in the same area, so I'd be flying all around the country to add just a couple of venues at a time. My current count is 84 (I'm excluding tournament venues where I have not seen the home team), leaving 304 to go. That's somewhere between 100 and 150 trips, assuming 2-3 venues per trip. As well, the season is relatively short, and most teams only have about 15 home games per season. So unless I win the lottery, or a wealthy benefactor pities me, that 388 will remain a dream.

Still, with the list of arenas in front of me, I thought it might be interesting in looking at their names and figure out which appellation is the most common. So I did a quick analysis and present it for your enjoyment.

The most popular type of venue is Center, with 157 on the list starting with Louisville's KFC Yum! Center with a capacity of 22,090, all the way down to G.B. Hodge Center in Spartanburg, SC, home of USC Upstate, which holds just 878.  Next up, there are 109 Arenas. Surprisingly, there are 3 venues that combine both of these terms: American Bank Center Arena in Corpus Christi, the Student Recreation Center Arena in Riverside, and the spectacularly commonly named Event Center Arena in San Jose. So 264 of the 390 (68%) have either Center or Arena in their name.

After that, the number drops quickly to 30, which is how many venues are Coliseums. Again, there is a double counter – the Williams Arena at Minges Coliseum in Greenville, home of the East Carolina Pirates.

Just below that is Gym and Gymnasium, which have 27 combined, with 6 preferring the shorter term. As we go further down the list, there are 17 Pavilions, 15 Halls, and 11 Fieldhouses (3 are actually Field House). There are two more double counters in here: Freedom Hall Civic Center (East Tennessee State) and Alaska Airlines Arena at Hec Edmundson Pavilion (Washington), which is also the longest at 47 characters.

The single digits include 7 Complexes, 5 Domes and 3 Courts. There are also 3 Forums, 2 of which double as NBA arenas (FedEx in Memphis, Fiserv in Milwaukee), with Boston College's Conte the other. There are 2 Spectrums (Cowan for Idaho and Smith for Utah State) and just 2 Stadiums, both of which include Indoor (Cameron for Duke and Jerry Richardson for Wofford).

That leaves 6 venues with unique descriptions: Madison Square Garden, The Palestra (Penn), Hornets Nest (Sacramento State), The Jungle (IUPUI women), Walter Pyramid (Long Beach State), and the William J. Nicks Building (Prairie View A&M).

So there you have it, the breakdown of all 388 Division I college basketball arena names. Keep this information handy when you need to stump an obnoxious college hoops fan.

Best,

Sean