Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 8, 1991 TAG: 9103080067
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Difference was, it was free.
The Metro Conference tournament isn't free. Not by a long shot. Then again, it isn't college basketball at its finest. Not by a long shot.
Originally, you had to buy tickets to all seven of the tournament's games - or none at all - for $87. That probably eliminated 90 percent of the potential audience in Roanoke.
Not that anybody ever considered the people who actually live here to be the audience. We were the hosts. We were here to carry the bags, drive the shuttles and bus the tables.
This was Roanoke's chance to shine, we were told. We didn't know that it meant to get to work on that pile of silverware.
And to be sure, there are a few dozen corporate types who both live in Roanoke and have the cash to rub shoulders at the Civic Center with the monied set from Louisville and New Orleans.
Most of us, though, can't afford basketball at those sorts of prices. We're the folks who sweat the rent every month, and for whom even the incredible cut-rate of $24 for a two-game ticket - made available just on Tuesday - still is too high.
Only sociopaths go to basketball games alone. To appear normal, you take someone along - your kid, your date, your dad. That means you're dropping $48 for a couple of live basketball games. Fifty bucks for four hours of basketball? For 50 bucks I can buy a ball, a rim and a net that'll last a decade!
Fifty bucks?
For 50 bucks I could take 45 friends to a movie at the Grandin Theater on Thursday night and still have money for popcorn.
For 50 bucks, I can take 10 kids to a birthday party at Putt-Putt miniature golf on Peters Creek Road. They play a round of 18 holes; they eat ice cream, cake and pop; they get their name announced over the public address system; and each partier gets 10 tokens for the video game room.
For 50 bucks, I can watch Vanilla Ice at the Salem Civic Center in a couple of weeks, WITH a date, WITH a meal at Hardee's beforehand, and WITH a nightcap at Rally's after the show.
For 50 bucks, I could go to eight Rebels hockey games. I could have gone to the rodeo in January - SEVEN TIMES! Four chums and I could have watched monster trucks for 50 bucks. A family of 10 could have watched professional wrestling in the Salvation Army gym in Southeast for 50 bucks just a few weeks ago.
For 50 bucks, I could have bought two of the best seats to the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra's performance in January of Sochinski Prokofiev Tchaikovsky - whoever he was - and still had time and money for a night of bowling afterward!
I could take 48 kids to the Mill Mountain Zoo for 50 bucks.
I could pick my 15 best friends and take them all to a Salem Buccaneers baseball game - and have $2 left over.
This Metro tournament was billed as Roanoke's chance to shine.
Too bad Roanoke can't see it.
Who made the decisions that keep rows of Civic Center seats empty during this tournament while whole neighborhoods of Roanokers sit at home?
by CNB