Sports
Though the arena was constructed with the Bobcats in mind, the arena hosts many types of sports and entertainment events. As North Carolina is a hotbed for college basketball, it is expected that the arena will host many NCAA basketball games. The venue hosted early-round NCAA Tournament games in 2008 and 2011, and the Charlotte 49ers have tentatively agreed to play several high-profile games there over the next several seasons. The 2008 ACC Men's Basketball Tournament and 2010 Southern Conference men's basketball tournament was played here as well. The Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA), the oldest historically black collegiate conference in the United States, has held its men's and women's basketball tournaments at the arena since 2006. The Southern Conference held the semifinals and finals of its 2010 men's and women's basketball championships in the arena.
In addition to the Bobcats, the arena currently has one other permanent tenant. The Charlotte Checkers of the ECHL vacated historic Bojangles Coliseum to play in the new arena in the fall of 2005. When the ECHL Checkers gave way to an AHL team with the same name, the AHL team remained at the arena. The Charlotte Sting of the WNBA moved, along with the Bobcats, from the old Charlotte Coliseum to the new venue in 2005 and played for one season and then folded due to low attendance.
The NASCAR Sprint Cup All-Star Pit Crew Challenge, part of the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race, is held on the Wednesday night of the race week at the arena, creating an indoor atmosphere so the pit competition will occur, rain or shine.
In January 2007, the Professional Bull Riders association hosted a Built Ford Tough Series event at this venue. The event was known as the "Dale Jr. PBR Clash", named after NASCAR driver and longtime PBR fan Dale Earnhardt, Jr., who teamed up with the PBR to put this event together. The PBR will visit Time Warner Cable Arena once again in the fall of 2011.
Read more about this topic: Time Warner Cable Arena
Famous quotes containing the word sports:
“In the end, I think you really only get as far as you’re allowed to get.”
—Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 87 (June 17, 1991)
“I looked so much like a guy you couldn’t tell if I was a boy or a girl. I had no hair, I wore guys’ clothes, I walked like a guy ... [ellipsis in source] I didn’t do anything right except sports. I was a social dropout, but sports was a way I could be acceptable to other kids and to my family.”
—Karen Logan (b. 1949)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)