Remember When... The Marriott Center Opened?

Remember When... The Marriott Center Opened?

From 1951 to 1971, the George Albert Smith Fieldhouse was home for BYU men’s basketball. During that span, BYU won five conference titles, advanced to the NCAA Tournament four times and the NIT Tournament three times. When the Fieldhouse was desperately needed for academic and intramural purposes and the basketball program’s popularity had outgrown the 10,200-seat capacity, the Marriott Center was born.

From the 1971-72 Men’s Basketball Media Guide

Win or lose, the 1971-72 basketball season at Brigham Young University will be a history-making one. It will be remembered as the year the Cougars moved into a new home, the J. Willard Marriott Activities Center. A multipurpose facility (concerts, forums, stage productions, as well as basketball games) is located on the north end of campus, just east of the football stadium.

The new rectangular-shaped facility, which is still under construction at this writing, will be the new home floor for Cougar basketball teams, beginning with the Time Zone Tournament on Dec. 3-4. BYU has invited three teams from other time zones to take part in the opening series: St. Joseph’s (Pa.), Kansas State, and Pacific. It will also be the site of the NCAA’s Far West basketball playoffs March 16-18, 1972.

When completed, the building will be the largest of its kind in the United States, covering about three acres. The outside dimensions are 280 x 340, or the equivalent of two football fields placed side by side. The roof covers 130,000 square feet, and will enclose 8 million cubic feet. From the playing floor to the top of the roof the height will be ten stories.

From BYU Today Jan. 1992 – “Amazing Aging – The Marriott Center Turns 20”

by Lee Benson

Despite the fact it doesn’t look it, that you couldn’t find a wad of gum underneath a seat if you checked all 23,000 of them, that you’d swear Kresimir Cosic graduated just yesterday, the Marriott Center, BYU’s answer to how to put practically your whole student body under the same rook, turns twenty this year.

No special ceremonies are planned, probably because the arena, finished in time for the 1971-72 school year, doesn’t look a day past zero.

For expert testimony on that subject, consider what no less an authority than Scott Williams thinks: “The Marriott Center today,” Williams says, “is as good of a building, if not better, than the day it was built.”

Williams knows arenas. He is the manager for the new $93 million, state-of-the-art, home-of-the-Jazz, 20,400-seat Delta Center in Salt Lake City. Prior to that, for nearly nineteen years, he was the Marriott Center’s supervisor. He says he can only hope the Delta Center ages half as well as the Marriott Center.

Before he changed jobs, Williams, as a consultant for the projected Salt Lake arena, spent dozens of weekends traveling around the country looking at new arenas. He went to Orlando, to Miami, to Sacramento, to Detroit, to Charlotte, to Milwaukee. He went wherever they had just completed a building to end all buildings.

“Then I’d come back to work Monday at the Marriott Center,” recalls Williams, “and marvel at the shape it was in.

“It was always as clean as the day it opened, maybe cleaner, and it was improved over the years to make it even better,” he says. “I saw buildings around the country six months old in more disrepair. I think it’s amazing that twenty years later there’s still not a broken seat, still not a wall with graffiti on it, that it’s still able to get a crowd in and out, and serve as a focal point for the university. Twenty-year-old buildings aren’t supposed to be able to do that.”

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The Marriott Center’s only growing pains came early on, when the administration couldn’t decide what to call it.

At first, school president Ernest L. Wilkinson (who would retire in 1971) decided there would be a contest to name the new arena. First prize, for a “name that most accurately describes the building and its various functions,” was set at $100.

But before the contest got rolling, a generous donation, well in excess of $1 million, came from J. Willard Marriott, and the name controversy was over. Marriott, albeit advertently, had won the contest.

The first official name was the Marriott Activities Center. But when abbreviators — newspaper headline writers especially — shortened that to “MAC,” and, soon enough, to “Big Mac,” the arena’s middle name was quickly and officially deleted. It was one thing to be nicknamed after a double-burger with special sauce on a sesame seed bun; it was yet another that Marriott’s food service empire was in active competition with McDonald’s.

Original Floor

The original suspended floor was a part of the Marriott Center from the first game in 1971 until 2006, when it was replaced with a Connor Uniforce floor and seismic upgrades took place. Fittingly, the last game played on the original floor featured the jersey retirement of Cougar great Kresimir Cosic, who played in BYU’s first game in the Marriott Center. An additional floor upgrade was installed in 2007.

Marriott Center Facts

BYU’s record: 448-119 (.790)

Last 10 years: 139-13 (.914)

Margin of victory in last 10 years: +16.4

All-time average attendance: 16,019

Top 25 in attendance in 35 of 39 seasons

Top 10 in attendance in 26 seasons

First in attendance in three seasons

Longest win streak: 53 games, 2005 to 2008

Undefeated home seasons: 10

Seasons with one home loss: 6

Top national college arenas

1. Syracuse (N.Y.), Carrier Dome, 33,000

2. Tennessee, Thompson-Boling Center, 24,525

3. Kentucky, Rupp Arena, 23,000 (off campus)

4. BYU, Marriott Center, 22,700

5. North Carolina, Dean Smith Center, 21,572

Remember When... Series

Starting on Friday, Oct. 15, BYUCougars.com will remember some of the great moments, players and events in BYU basketball history. A new installment to the series will be posted every weekday until the 2010-11 men’s basketball season opener against Fresno State on Nov. 12.