UCLA's Daily Bruin Calls Hoops Facility a "Pricey Redundancy"

When the Basketball Practice Facility was announced last week, Ajax took Chianti and the Morgan Center to task for their poor planning of the Pauley Renovation and not incorporating the features of the Basketball Practice Facility into the plans for PUG.

Today, the Daily Bruin Editorial Board has joined the list of critics with an editorial that not only questions the need for the facility, but also goes a step further by calling the project a "pricey redundancy".

The Editorial Board also displayed an acute understanding of our Athletics facilities by comparing the basketball facility to the football facility.

This board recognized the benefit of a steady recruiting stream with the announcement of a football-facility funding drive late last year, but the football program’s needs are entirely different. Spaulding Field consists of two less-than-stellar 80-yard football fields, and the Rose Bowl is a hard sell to high school athletes at a 30-plus-minute drive from campus. Something in that equation had to change for the football program to be on a level playing field with schools like Oregon and USC.

Ouch. Read that again: "two less-than-stellar 80-yard football fields". It's another fantastic dig at the poor planning that takes place at the Morgan Center.

But, in my opinion, the article gets even better still.

It ends using Senior Associate Athletic Director Ken Weiner's own words against him by referring to a promotional video tour of new Pauley in October 2012. Weiner said:

"28,000 square feet of floor space," he said. "That’s a lot of space to get things done."

Yogi Berra once said, "The future ain't what is used to be." Well, apparently, in Guerreroland, 28,000 square feet of floor space ain't what it used to be either.