Why McKenzie Arena will never again hold SEC basketball tournaments

UTC head coach Jim Foster looks on from a distance as his team is introduced in McKenzie Arena in Chattanooga.
UTC head coach Jim Foster looks on from a distance as his team is introduced in McKenzie Arena in Chattanooga.

Chattanooga's chances of hosting future Southeastern Conference women's basketball tournaments have been squashed by that new financial behemoth known as the SEC Network.

The league approached the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and the Chattanooga Sports Committee in 2013 about the desire to recreate the magic the SEC women's tournament enjoyed here for most of the 1990s. Yet the SEC Network that launched last August has changed the way league events are covered, and the 33-year-old McKenzie Arena does not have the infrastructure to house the network's needs.

At the SEC women's tournament held two weeks ago at Verizon Arena in North Little Rock, Ark., the SEC Network had a 120-member production team. A 16-foot-by-16-foot set was constructed for network analysts Maria Taylor and Nell Fortner to be able to interview a winning coach and player after each game.

"They treated our tournament like it was the Final Four," SEC director of communications Tammy Wilson said this week. "Chattanooga is a great city and has the right arena size-wise for our tournament, but the problem is everything we have to do behind the scenes. It's why we left years ago.

"We ran out of room to put people, and now we're bringing in more."

League officials informed UTC and the Sports Committee on Friday that Chattanooga has been eliminated from the opportunity to host the 2017 tournament as well as the tournaments from 2019 through 2021.

McKenzie Arena housed the SEC women seven times in an eight-year stretch from 1993 to 2000, growing an event that drew just 12,318 spectators in 1992 to more than 40,000 in both 1999 and 2000. The city's seven-year relationship with the SEC resulted in an economic impact of $10.91 million, according to Sports Committee figures.

That multiyear amount, however, pales to the projected $35 million the SEC Network now will be providing in annual revenue for each of the league's 14 institutions.

Next year's SEC women's tournament will be held in Jacksonville, Fla., marking the first time the Sunshine State has hosted the event. The 2018 and 2022 tournaments have been awarded to Nashville, but the sites in other upcoming years have yet to be determined.

The decision for 2017 likely will be made in late May at the SEC meetings in Destin, Fla.

"I think the SEC coaches want to come here," UTC athletic director David Blackburn said. "They remember what this tournament used to be."

The recent SEC women's tournament drew 25,821 fans, which pales to the 41,185 who attended McKenzie in 2000. The 1999 tournament produced a then-record audience of 43,221, which included a sold-out semifinal session.

Nashville's Bridgestone Arena has been a great location for the SEC women's tournament, housing a record 51,036 in 2008 and 46,130 in 2012, but that venue is hosting the SEC men's tournament for all but two of the next 10 years.

The 2013 and '14 SEC women's tournaments in Duluth, Ga., struggled from an attendance standpoint, which had enhanced the attractiveness of returning to Chattanooga.

McKenzie Arena opened in the fall of 1982 as a multipurpose venue that through the years has held professional wrestling, monster truck rallies and Disney on Ice shows in addition to UTC men's and women's basketball games. This weekend, the 11,218-seat facility is housing the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus.

Two years ago, the arena underwent $1.5 million worth of enhancements to its courtside seating.

SEC assistant commissioner Leslie Claybrook said last spring that coaches and administrators within the league remember the buzz inside McKenzie and around the city, but the lack of floor-level amenities will continue to leave college tournaments as a memory for Chattanooga. The last tournaments of note were the Southern Conference men's and women's events in 2011.

Even the court used the past five years at the SEC women's tournament, which spans 116 feet, would force the removal of seats inside McKenzie.

"Clearly the inner workings would have been the big challenge," Wilson said. "There is definitely some good and bad with the arena in Chattanooga."

Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.

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