A companion post to the previous one, this was written in November 2006.
Cal recently got itself a new basketball arena. It wasn't completely new - it was built inside the same structure where the old one was, Harmon Gym. Harmon Gym was only slightly larger than a typical high school gym, but that intimacy gave the basketball team an unmatched home team advantage. It was loud, it was intense, and the rabid student fans were barely off the floor.
It was also small, and as Jason Kidd began to lead the team to be a true basketball force to be contended with, games became more and more popular and more and more impossible to get tickets for. I remember one year crowds of students camping out for season tickets. Another year there was some ill-planned idea to announce a mystery location over the radio where tickets were to go on sale, which led to thousands of students stumbling around the campus in the pre-dawn darkness to try to buy them.
So eventually it was decided, perhaps rightfully, to make the arena bigger. And to an extent, it was done well - leaving the original structure and expanding it upwards to add capacity. But I can't tell you for certain, because I've never set foot in the place. And, loyal Cal fan though I am, I never will until what I'm about to describe changes:
Stadiums cost money to build, of course. And they require significant donations. In return for those donations, donors get special perks. In this case, what the donors got were sideline, courtside seats. Now, they always had sideline, courtside seats. But with this renovation they got the sideline, courtside seats the students used to have. Students have instead been banished to behind the basket, though with one small exception. See, donations didn't pay for it all. Sponsors were still required. So one sponsor, the company now known as AT&T, bought the right to be named the sponsor of the small student section on the sideline, courtside. (The original student section used to take up almost the entire sideline from floor to ceiling.) Students who sit there must wear matching t-shirts advertising the sponsor. In order to enjoy the game the way Cal students have for decades and decades before, students now have to be walking billboards for a corporation.
Let's not forget: this is Cal. This is Berkeley. Think free speech movement, student protesters, the best and brightest minds making new discoveries daily. It is completely antithetical to all of this for the student body to be prostituted just so it can retain its access to its team.
After all, sports may be fun, and ultimately they may be good for the university community, helping tie it together more tightly. But it cannot be forgotten: it's a student team. The game is being played by students and it should be for students. Under this new arrangement, however, the team might as well be in the NBA, as obviously the team's money-making potential is all that's really important.