Today a friend and I drove the three hour drive up Interstate 5 to Eugene for our appointment to pick our season ticket seats in the new University of Oregon basketball arena,nicknamed "Matt Court." Our appointment with the Athletic Department was set for 10 am so we left Medford about 6:30 am. What a perfect summer day to get out of the office. When we got to Eugene we drove around "Matt Court" which is still under construction. We then drove around campus. For a summer day there were a lot of young people walking around. We then drove across the Willamette river to Oregon's football stadium, Autzen Stadium for our appointment. They had marked parking spaces reserved for people there to pick their seats in back of the "Mo Center." We then took the elevator up to the third level of the sky suites at Autzen Stadum and were directed to a sky Suite overlooking the football field. We checked in and were offered drinks and snacks. They had sample seats to try out and a large screen TV of the selection room which shows the selection board (large seating chart)by a live web cam on the board from the selection suite down the hall. As people picked and reserved seats they would put red stickers on the seat to show it was taken. We were able to ask Athletic Department staff, who were in the room, questions and see detailed diagrams of all three floors of Matt Court.We checked out were the elevators, restrooms and snack bars were located on the concourse for the third level where we were going to pick seats. While waiting we check out the new turf on Autzen stadium and the fact they had taken off the old painted diagrams around the base of the stadium in perpetration of repainting it. A Athletic Department Staff member then came over and told us she would guide us through the process. We talked to her till it was time to walk down the hall to Nike's Phil Knights Suite to do the actual picking. Once we got there we were put in another holding area till it was time to go to the big board for our pick. My wife back in Medford was able to watch on the web cam and saw the back of my hat as I picked our seats in the Midcourt Terrace on the side facing the Oregon Bench. We were able to get aisle seats.They then put red stickers on the board where we had picked seats and we talked briefly to some of the staff we knew. We were then taken down the hall to another suite to make a deposit on the seats.
We then waked over to the Mo Center "Duck Shop" to do some shopping. They did not have what I wanted so they called the other "Duck Shop" stores in Eugene and found what I was looking for over at The Duck Shop" at the Valley River Center Mall. We drove over there and from there we drove through downtown Eugene and then went to the Nike store at the Oakway Mall on Coburg Road. From there we went to the Duck Shop at the campus bookstore on campus. We then had lunch at Track Town Pizza across Franklin Blvd from the under construction Matt Court. Many of the construction workers from the arena construction were there having lunch. It's nice to see construction workers able to work in this economy. After lunch we drove the three hour trip back to Medford.
It was a great day!
To see the live web cam of the seating board as well as a web cam of the actual construction click on the title above for a link to mactomatt.net. You may have to do some addition clicking but there is a lot of information about the new Matthew Knight Arena named for Phil Knights deceased son. Thanks Phil for all you do for the Ducks!
After a long wait it's finally becoming a reality. Go Ducks!
