The Bob Devaney Sports Center is a sports complex on the campus of the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Nebraska that includes a 13,595-seat multi-purpose arena, a 1,000-seat covered 25-yard swimming and diving facility (Devaney Center Natatorium) and a 5,000-seat covered track and field (athletics) facility (Devaney Sports Center Indoor Track) that features a 200-meter hydraulic-banked track, one of only 3 in the United States and 7 in the world. The arena opened in 1976 and is named after former Nebraska football coach and athletic director Bob Devaney. It is home to the Cornhuskers basketball, gymnastics, indoor track and field and swimming and diving teams. The building replaced the Nebraska Coliseum, the current home of the volleyball and wrestling teams.
It hosted the 1980, 1984 and 1988 men's NCAA basketball tournament Midwest first- and second-round games, and the 1993 women's NCAA tournament first round. In the arena's first thirty years, the men's basketball team has never had a losing home schedule.
Pinnacle Bank Arena, a new arena presently under construction in the Haymarket district, will replace the Bob Devaney Sports Center for the basketball teams in the fall of 2013.
The Bob Devaney Sports Center actually opened in March of 1976 when it was used for the Nebraska Boys State Basketball Tournament. The Nebraska Cornhuskers decided to wait to the beginning of the next season because they wanted the home advantage of the old Coliseum.
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“English Bob: What I heard was that you fell off your horse, drunk, of course, and that you broke your bloody neck.
Little Bill Daggett: I heard that one myself, Bob. Hell, I even thought I was dead. ‘Til I found out it was just that I was in Nebraska.”
—David Webb Peoples, screenwriter. English Bob (Richard Harris)
“The whole idea of image is so confused. On the one hand, Madison Avenue is worried about the image of the players in a tennis tour. On the other hand, sports events are often sponsored by the makers of junk food, beer, and cigarettes. What’s the message when an athlete who works at keeping her body fit is sponsored by a sugar-filled snack that does more harm than good?”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the center of the silent Word.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)