Jimmy Lemke has a great article about the future of an on-campus arena.

I agree with the notion that 5,000 is not enough. Jimmy states that the Panthers current attendance average is 4,200 per game. So here is an obvious question. Why build a new arena? The answers are simple. 1) Better for recruiting 2) Bring in more revenue and most important 3) Be able to play on campus, allowing more students/fans to go to games. All in agreement?

So how many more students would this bring to games? If it is only 800, then why bother? If the University only want 800 more fans per game, than it is simply not worth it to spend the money on a new facility. Now, a new facility will certainly build excitement throughout campus, and certainly bring more people, especially students, to the games. So why turn them away?

You don't build a facility to house what you are content with having, you build a new facility to "grow into", as Jimmy said.

A new on-campus basketball facility could be the ultimate long-term program changer for Panther Athletics, don't come up 'short', build for 7,000-10,000 fans. It may seem bigger than what is needed now, but once it is done, there is no going back.