Does Oklahoma Need a New Basketball Arena? Yes. Where Would it Go? It's Complicated

Sooners coach Porter Moser officially joined the discussion during his Zoom call Thursday, but there's no easy solution for OU to move away from Lloyd Noble Center.

The old debate has returned.

Does Oklahoma need a new basketball arena? How bad are things now at Lloyd Noble Center? And, most pressing of all — where would the school put a new one?

Porter Moser is just in his first year coaching the Sooners, but on Thursday during a video press conference, he emphatically stated his case: OU absolutely needs a new arena.

“Well, just to give a broad, general statement right now, and I’ll probably go into more detail later: yeah, I definitely think it’s time for a new arena. For a lot of reasons.”

In 2018, a proposal to build a multipurpose facility in the University North Park district was not supported by the Norman City Council.

The Norman Transcript reported last week that the discussion has been taken up by Cleveland County commissioners, who are “pursuing a partnership” with the OU athletic department and the OU Foundation to study the feasibility of such a project.

The city and county want to slow the migration of young adults into Oklahoma City, giving them more reasons to stick around Norman. It's a noble pursuit based in economics.

But location — off campus — is one of the problems inherent in Lloyd Noble. It’s on the edge of campus and it’s not the easiest attraction for students living in the heart of the campus.

And that’s Moser’s target audience.

“I’m doing what I can control right now,” Moser said, “and that’s trying to get those students in there and people in there and put a product on the floor where we’re playing our tails off that people want to root for us. And I’m going to keep doing that to connect with the students. I love our student body. I think they’re awesome.”

That’s why Moser made a half court shot to give students free tickets for the rest of the year, and why he has delivered free pizza to them before games, and why he immerses himself in the student section’s “Boom Squad” for an endless series of postgame high fives and chest bumps.

He’s passionate about student participation and how young people can impact the outcome of a close game.

The Sooners, of course, have majored in close games this season.

It would be folly, of course, to build a new arena simply because one coach wants more students at the games. It’s possible Moser might be at OU for 20 years. It’s possible he might not. Coaches come and go. Programs endure. Cultures endure.

But the truth is that the next coach will say the same thing. The one after that, too, and the one after that.

Lloyd Noble itself is fine as an arena. Not perfect. Not acoustically intimidating. Outdated, yes, but also updated. When the Sooners are good, crowds are good. When they’re not, they’re not. Not the arena’s fault.

But if the location were better — where McCasland Fieldhouse is, for example, or a bit to the east, in the vicinity of John Jacobs Track and all those surface parking lots just east of Jenkins Avenue — then student attendance would be better.

Moser said he’s “been talking” with athletic director Joe Castiglione about the potential for a new arena since he hired Moser last year.

“He’s very much in those conversations and very aggressive with those conversations of what we want (to get) done,” Moser said.

Aggressive enough to dig into a reimagined McCasland — one with 9,000 seats and a lowered floor and two decks of arena seating? Is that even possible? The McCasland location is prime, but the footprint can’t grow by much and shouldn’t encroach on the hallowed football grounds. Maybe a more vertical McCasland is the solution here?

One priority on the OU campus is to not sacrifice too many football parking spaces for a new basketball footprint. Tailgating on gamedays has become a cultural staple. The ticket-buying public plans its fall Saturdays around it.

There’s no space to the west. Campus is full. Brand new facilities on the south side of Lindsey Street rule that out. Too far south and it would make no sense to leave Lloyd Noble.

Settling into a trendy new entertainment and dining venue three miles to the northwest for 16 event dates each basketball season could be great for the city and county governments, but it does little to help Oklahoma basketball pump some needed vigor and intensity into the home game atmosphere.

As any OU coach would, Moser wants a new arena closer to the center of campus, not further away.

“Definitely,” he said. “Lloyd Noble is, I don’t know what … is it 50 years old? It’s (almost) 50 years old (47). I mean, there’s (schools) that have had two arenas since then. Definitely it’s a huge part of what we want and the direction we want to go.

“I’ll dive into that more when the season’s over where I can really see the pros and cons of everything,” Moser said. “I just know what we need.”