History
Dominating the campus skyline, the building was opened in 1977 largely as an attempt to increase attendance at the university's struggling football program and to help its recruiting, but also as a large, multi-purpose campus building. The contract ran both well over budget and the allotted time, with the eventual opening occurring two football seasons later than had been planned.
The building has had its successes but never truly put the Buccaneer football program on the map, despite being one of very few on-campus domed stadiums in the United States. The decision was made by ETSU president Dr. Paul Stanton for ETSU to drop football following the conclusion of the 2003 season.
For the 2006–2007 academic year and basketball season, the Mini-Dome's occupancy was decreased to around 6,800 due to fire code restrictions. Efforts are underway to build a true basketball arena on campus, but the Mini-Dome will likely remain intact due to the large number of offices and training facilities it contains, as well as the enormous cost of demolition.
In 2006–2007, ETSU made an attempt to bring back the football program, but it failed when the student body voted down an increase in the athletic fee that was needed to fund it. The Mini-Dome was not considered as a possible venue for the new program.
The interior of the Mini-Dome is pictured briefly in the ending moments of the film We Are Marshall during a sequence of highlights of the Marshall University football team.
Read more about this topic: ETSU/Mountain States Health Alliance Athletic Center
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)