Mac Court Memento

We bade farewell to McArthur Court -- home of the University of Oregon Ducks -- over the New Year's holiday weekend by attending the last two UO men's basketball games scheduled to be played in the venerable, iconic and much-beloved arena (above).

The 84-year-old gymnasium, one of the great venues in college basketball lore and the third oldest on-campus facility in the country, will soon be replaced by the state-of-the-art Matthew Knight Arena funded in part by Nike founder Phil Knight.

Mac Court has hosted more than 1,500 men's and women's basketball games, countless volleyball, wrestling and gymnastics matches, and college and high school basketball tournaments. Built in 1926, the facility was designed by Ellis Lawrence, noted campus architect and longtime dean of the School of Architecture and Allied Arts.

"The Pit" as it came to be known, was named for Clifton "Pat" McArthur, a former UO student body president and member of Congress from Oregon. In addition to sporting events, the arena has also featured visits by presidential candidates ranging from Robert Kennedy to Barack Obama, musicians from Elvis to The Grateful Dead and comedians from Bob Hope to George Carlin.

As a longtime season ticket holder to UO men's basketball (the view from our seats, above), I have spent a considerable amount of time at Mac Court over the years. But my first visit was not to attend a basketball game, a concert or a political rally; it was to register for class as a new student at the University of Oregon.

In my day, registration for classes at Mac Court was -- in a word -- nutty. Students were assigned times and had to sit in the bleachers to wait their turns. As you might expect, underclassmen always went last and when your number came up, you had to virtually run from table to table to register for classes. Class status and availability were posted on a large scoreboard (above).

Of course, most of the popular classes were filled by the time you got there, so you'd better have a back-up plan. The whole experience was not unlike an ant farm, with students climbing over one another to get that class they really needed to graduate. The only upside to the whole process was that it was a good way to meet girls.

By the time I arrived in Eugene, the UO basketball team had become so popular that it was hard to get tickets to games, even if you were a student. But one fateful day in February, 1974, I took a call from an old girlfriend -- a fellow UO student who lived in a sorority on campus. She bemoaned the fact that she had to travel to Portland for the weekend and asked me if I wanted her ticket to the UO-UCLA men's basketball game.

"Hell, yeah!" I remember saying, and soon I would be attending my first UO men's basketball game in Mac Court. This would be no ordinary conference game, however.

The Ducks were playing the mighty UCLA Bruins, darlings of the college basketball world, winners of 88 straight games (a record which was only just recently bested by the University of Connecticut's women's basketball team) and the No. 1-ranked team in the country.

If that wasn't bad enough, our buddies up the road in Corvallis -- the Oregon State Beavers -- had upset UCLA two nights before. Surely the Bruins would take out their frustrations on the Ducks.

But Oregon was no cellar-dweller that year. Coached by Penn legend Dick Harter, the team featured the "Kamikaze Kids," a scrappy group of players known for their swarming defense and reckless abandon. With future NBA players Ron Lee (below, #30) and Greg Ballard (below, #42), these guys led the league in floor burns and would prove a formidable opponent for the prima donnas from La-La Land.

My impression of Mac Court would forever be shaped by that first game. Before tip-off, the cheerleaders whipped the crowd into a frenzy. During the course of the game, Mac Court rocked so loudly that you could barely hear yourself think; the scoreboard swayed from the stomping and screaming of 10,000 fans. The Pit had its own pulse and you could feel the beat with every fiber of your being.

UCLA jumped to an 11-2 lead, but nobody panicked; UO found ways to break the Bruin press and the Ducks led at halftime. UCLA made a run in the second half, taking a one-point lead, but ultimately they could not stop the collective will of Ronnie Lee, his band of kamikazes and the Mac Court crowd. At the final buzzer, the scoreboard read 56-51 in favor of the Ducks and pandemonium ensued.

Sport Illustrated reporter Kenny Moore -- a UO grad -- wrote "(UCLA Coach) Wooden got his players through the melee, and when the floor cleared in an hour or so, it was slick with tears of deliverance." On that day, I became a true believer in the mystique of Mac Court.

This place was a bonafide home court advantage and students and fans were genuinely passionate for their beloved Ducks. Moving back to Eugene for graduate school, we naturally purchased season tickets (hey, what else can you do in Eugene during the rainy winter season?).

I have many other Mac Court memories including watching a bloated Elvis in his white jump suit belting out his hits just months before his death.

Mac Court was also the site of a 1984 visit by Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson (right), who held court among hundreds of admiring students. I shot several rolls of film at that event (below, in a shot taken by my brother Robert's roommate Ray Bell) and they turned out so well, despite Thompson's manic ramblings, that I had a number of them framed.

Years later, Thompson returned to Eugene, this time at the Eugene Hilton.

Knowing Thompson's penchant for tardiness, longtime friend Tom Maloney and I attended a Duck basketball game at Mac Court prior to heading to the Hilton. Hoping for a autograph on one of my framed shots, I handed Thompson the picture. "Great shot, eh?" he blurted. "Reminds me of my glory days." He then handed the print to his bodyguard and ordered him to "put this with the other stuff."

Naturally, I was upset. As a consolation prize, he signed my Oregon basketball ticket with a hastily-scribbled "HST." Much later, in hindsight, my disdain with Hunter S. Thompson was replaced by a sense of honor that he thought enough of his portrait to confiscate it.

With too many memories of Mac Court to recount in this space, I'll wrap up this blog post by noting two other significant events.

Mac Court was the site of both my graduation ceremony and that of my daughter, Gina, (above, middle) who is pictured here at one of the entrances to Mac Court with fellow University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication classmates Hannah Smith (left) and Beth Evans (right).

So it is not without a bit of nostalgia that we say "farewell" to beloved McArthur Court. It is, as the man says, the end of an era. As singer/songwriter Jackson Browne would lament:

All good things got to come to an end,

The thrills have to fade, before they come 'round again,

The bills will be paid and the pleasure will mend,

All good things got to come to an end.