At a meeting held last Tuesday to unveil the seating plan for the renovated Pauley Pavilion, UCLA administrators also released a seating diagram that indicates that students will continue to sit front and center in the remodeled arena.
The student section will flip from where it currently resides on the northern side to the southern side of the court and will also include additional floor seats behind the west basket.
According to Marc Dellins, sports information director, the student section will remain at approximately 2,000 seats when Pauley opens in 2012, but the arrangement of the seats will be more conducive to creating a raucous environment.
“There will be more floor seats (for students), definitely,” Dellins said.
In exchange for the new set of seats behind the west basket, Dellins said that relatively fewer seats would be allotted to students in the upper levels. The diagram indicates that seven sections of upper-level seats ““ from section 220B to 224B ““ will still be held for students in the renovated arena. Those seven sections lie directly behind the west basket and wrap around the southwest corner of the arena.
Den President Jamie Arneson and UCLA Rally Committee Chairwoman Meggan McGrath are two members of a group that was invited to give student input to organizers of the Campaign of Champions when the renovation of Pauley Pavilion was still in its planning stages.
Both heads of the student fan groups said they were pleased with the final seating plan and the additional floor seats allocated to students.
“I’m actually really excited about it,” Arneson said.
“I love it when people can screw with the other team when they are shooting and all that good stuff. We don’t have that now.”
McGrath said she thinks it will be better to have the students more spread around the pavilion.
“We’ve got the same area, which is great, and as long as they are giving us the same number of seats as we have always had, that is fine,” McGrath said.
Because the raw number of student seats will remain about the same in the remodeled arena, it appears some students will still be left without tickets to basketball games.
But Arneson said that student groups understand there is a limit on the number of seats they can have, especially considering that students are not the major donors to the renovation project.
“Obviously we would love to have more people be able to go to the games. … At the same time, I work at a ticket office, and I know a bunch of people have tickets and they never ever go,” Arneson said.
In the renovated Pauley Pavilion, team benches are slated to inhabit the north side of the arena. Because NCAA rules prohibit students from sitting directly behind team benches, McGrath said that she and other student representatives accepted the switch of the student section to the south side of the arena.
Arneson also said that she thinks the additional floor seats have the added benefit of helping to boost student attendance, and she is excited to see how students will react to seating changes.
“I know a lot of people, when given the choice of sitting on top or watching the game on TV, will just watch it on TV,” she said.
“I think (students) can really, really make a difference, especially with those lower seats on both sides, we can hopefully have even more of a home court advantage,” she said.
“We can be one of those teams in the Pac-10 that people don’t want to come and play.”
A new point program
To the majority of the UCLA community, the most pertinent part of Tuesday’s announcement had nothing to do with student seating.
Alongside the seating plan, UCLA released its point system, which will be used to determine where season ticket holders will sit when the remodeled building opens in 2012.
According to the seating guide released by the UCLA athletic department, points will be awarded for a wide array of criteria. The criteria range from consecutive years as a season ticket holder to alumni status to monetary contributions to the Campaign of Champions.
The vast majority of seats require season ticket holders to pay a one-time initial donation to the Campaign of Champions that can be spread over five years, an annual donation to the Wooden Athletic Fund and the face value of the ticket.
Sideline reserved seats will require a one-time initial donation of $30,000 or more and courtside seats will require donations of $100,000 or more.
Annual donations to the Wooden Athletic Fund range from $0 for general seating in the upper level to $17,000 for first-row courtside seats.
Season ticket holders will have until March 31, 2011 to accumulate points toward their overall ranking. Rankings will determine which seats will be available to which season ticket holders.
A call to Ross Bjork, senior associate athletic director, to elaborate on the details of the seating plan and the point program was not returned as of press time.