03/02 at 10:39 PM

As much as coaches, players and pretty much everyone else in the Auburn athletic department have talked excitedly about the new Auburn Arena, it likely doesn’t even sniff the buzz that took over the campus more than 40 years ago.

Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum certainly isn’t “The Barn.”

“You didn’t know which board to jump off of,” former Auburn forward Bill Alexander said. “In that Old Barn, you had special boards where, boy, you could really jump off them.”

The upkeep of Auburn’s 41-year-old arena maybe hasn’t been up to snuff with some of its counterparts around the league, but it’s safe to say DeWayne Reed and the rest of Auburn’s players won’t get an extra boost from a favorite patch of wood in tonight’s final game at Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum.

The game, which pits Auburn in an important SEC matchup with Mississippi State, will be the undercard to all the memories shared, momentous occasions remembered, famous faces in attendance and overall nostalgia oozed from tonight’s ceremonies.

“This place is special,” former women’s basketball coach Joe Ciampi said. “This is home.”

‘Everything about it was unique’

“The Barn” was intimate, sure.

The homecourt advantage Auburn had inside the old Auburn Sports Arena was so good that certain SEC coaches, namely Kentucky’s Adolph Rupp, dreaded making the trek into town to play before 2,500 raucous fans.

“The Barn was special,” said Keith Bagwell, Auburn’s director of facilities who has seen every Auburn basketball game since 1960. “Everything about it was unique. It was sad day when that place burned down. I’m sure it wouldn’t be here now, but it was a sad day.”

All that fun didn’t match Auburn’s necessity or desire for a brand new, multi-purpose arena.

After years of mulling potential possibilities, the plan came together in 1965, when the Alabama State Legislature approved of its construction.

The total bill would be $6,033,597, with $4.5 million coming from state funds, $685,597 from federal funds, $498,000 from university funds and $360,000 from the athletic department.

The current tab on the new Auburn Arena is slightly less than $92.5 million.

Slimmer price tag notwithstanding, the opening of 12,500-seat Memorial Coliseum had a significant impact not just at Auburn, but around the conference and eastern Alabama.

“So many things could be done in this facility that we certainly couldn’t do in Alumni Gym just because of space alone,” said Susan Nunnelly, former women’s basketball coach and current women’s PA announcer. “You had to go to Columbus or Montgomery for a facility that would seat that many.”

‘Come on in’
Alexander remembered the buildup to Auburn’s first game in its new palace as less than ceremonious.

“We were practicing in the Old Barn and they just got that thing ready and they said, ‘Hey, Y’all come on in and play tonight,’” Alexander said. “So we went over there and played.”

What happened shortly thereafter was the type of storybook material that still had Alexander and his teammate, Wally Tinker, buzzing on a teleconference with reporters Monday.

It was Jan. 11, 1969, and LSU was in town to help the Tigers open their new building. “Pistol” Pete Maravich, one of the greatest of all-time, was on the opposing bench, the equivalent of piling spoonfuls of whipped cream on top of an ice cream sundae for the already big-time event.

“Maravich brought in droves of people by himself,” Alexander said. “There was a lot of history made there in one night.”
There was just one minor snafu: The lower-bowl bleachers hadn’t arrived yet, forcing a number of attendees with reserved seats to either find a seat elsewhere or listen to the game on the radio.

Pictures of the game depict a Roman Coliseum atmosphere, with the closest fans seated 15 feet above the floor.

That was about all that went wrong for Auburn on that night.

Alexander won the opening tip for the Tigers and Tinker soon scored the first basket.

“Wally Tinker was the epitome of a teammate that any person could ever have in college basketball because he was the most unselfish player we had on our team,” Alexander said. “It was very fitting that Wally made the first basket.”

The rest of Tinker’s night wasn’t as easy. He had Maravich to worry about on defense.

Right before halftime, Tinker bent to his knees at the foul line, panting and covered in sweat, before he delivered a quip to Maravich.
“I looked over at him and told him we were going to have to slow down,” Tinker said. “He looked at me and said, ‘We are just getting started.’”

Maravich didn’t stop doing what he did best on his way to 46 points, which still stands today as the most ever scored by an opposing player in the building’s history. It was just 19 points too little, as Auburn coasted to a 90-71 rout.

“We put a pretty good whipping on them,” Tinker said. “That was a thrill.”

A basketball legacy
From the Rolling Stones to the Harlem Globetrotters; from Elton John to Olivia Newton-John; from Bob Hope to Gerald Ford; from indoor track to collegiate wrestling, Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum has truly put the “multi” in multi-purpose.

Unlike the new Auburn Arena, it wasn’t built for basketball, but basketball will be the legacy it leaves behind.

Both the men’s and women’s teams have won significantly more than they lost in Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum, and each took their turn
filling it past the liking of local fire marshalls.

In 1993, 12,620 fans packed into the arena to watch Auburn beat Alabama, 78-70. Sixteen years later, with the arena’s capacity shrunk to 10,500, more than 12,000 piled in to watch the Auburn women rout Tennessee.

Each team has clinched SEC Championships in the building, with the men’s only one since 1960 happening Feb. 17, 1999, on what many describe as the nuttiest night in the arena’s history.

“The fans were there, they were loud and they were rocking and rolling,” former point guard Doc Robinson said. “Everyone stayed. I don’t even think anyone left that night until we all left the coliseum.”

The men are 395-192 heading into tonight’s game. The women, after their upset victory Sunday over No. 14 Kentucky, finished 349-72, aided largely by a 68-game winning streak under Ciampi that ran through 1991.

Ciampi is the winningest coach in the building’s history, followed by men’s coaches Cliff Ellis and Sonny Smith.

“I can sip some Grey Goose and talk to Sonny and Cliff and everybody else and be on top of the mountain,” Ciampi joked. “Sonny and I will probably rip one another (tonight), but it’s a good feeling knowing that you’ve accomplished something in an era of 25 years.”

Weathering the storm
For how much it’s seen, how diverse of events it’s hosted, Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum has aged with grace, Nunnelly said.

“It has weathered the storm mighty well,” she said. “It’s been a long time, especially with the use it’s gotten. It’s a facility that still can be used for a while until they decide to do something with it.”

The building can’t be remembered, though, without bringing up a few of its shortcomings, the primary impetus to move down the street into a state-of-art facility.

From its first days of its existence to today, there’s been something about the arena that has elicited some sort of gripe.

Its bland, outward appearance can be attributed to the era it was constructed in — a 10-year stretch that certainly won’t be considered golden by stadium architects of today. Practicality and cost superseded aesthetics from the mid-60s to mid-70s across the entire sports spectrum.

Concrete, and lots of it, was used to build the era’s stadiums and arenas, most of which — like BEMC — have been weeded out and replaced.

Inside today, there are exposed pipes, walls with chipped paint, a video scoreboard that frequently displays burnt-out, black boxes and an old-fashioned scale that might have pre-dated “The Barn.” The wooden basketball court, though, is as new as any in the conference, an addition at the beginning of the Jeff Lebo era.

It’s come a long way from the synthetic, Tartan surface that originally served as the thin barrier between players’ feet and cement.

Like Astroturf, Tartan floors were a hot trend of the ’60s and ’70s that later proved highly detrimental to athletes’ safety.

“It drove our feet up into our knees,” Alexander said.

Perception has been the arena’s biggest enemy, Smith said, as a number of outside writers, fans and talking heads have ripped its supposed non-existent homecourt advantage.

“It’s not that Beard-Eaves is a bad place to play basketball,” Smith said. “The perception is there that it is a bad place even though it isn’t, that it’s too old.”

Moving forward
Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum will not only be old next season, but it will be without a purpose.

There have been multiple ideas floated for the arena’s future, but nothing has been made official. Few, if any, of the plans involve the arena remaining upright.

“I’ve known this building longer than I’ve known my wife,” Bagwell said. “But, it’s time.”

Lebo and women’s coach Nell Fortner have both repeatedly expressed their excitement to move into their new digs, and have lamented how much it will improve Auburn’s basketball program, specifically when it comes to recruiting.

Players, too, have shed few tears, as a building that has been constructed specifically for their sport will soon be a place they call home.

Even players like Tinker and Alexander don’t go any farther than saying tonight’s game will be bittersweet.

The future is just too promising to overlook.

“It is an exciting day for Auburn basketball to be able to go into an arena like this,” Alexander said. “This is a new day.”

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