and his BYU Cougars. In reality, McGown was really saying, “Ruffie, wow me. Knock my socks off. Do something that everyone in the world of Volleyball will be talking about forever”.
All for only $500.
Leaving McGown’s well-worn and cramped offices, I stepped into the Smith Fieldhouse for the first time in nearly a decade and immediately trotted up to the top bleachers. Alone, I breathed in the atmosphere and tried to remember what it was like nearly a decade earlier. The venerable old girl hadn’t changed all that much. The Fieldhouse had undergone a renovation in 1985 and the old press box above the court was gone. Smith Fieldhouse had been the home of BYU Basketball for more than 20 years and the University needed the press box above the court when it played host to numerous home basketball games and NCAA Regional Basketball competition. Spanning a glance left and right across the length of the arena, I started grinning Alice’s Cheshire cat. I could see it all. It was materializing right in front of my eyes and I knew exactly how to turn the opening night of NCAA Men’s Volleyball at Brigham Young University was going to be something no one at this school had ever witnessed. I was playing over and over in my brain like a time-worn movie until my skull was ready to pop.
Sitting there in the stands, I would see it all; the fans, the atmosphere. BYU winning (fat chance of that really happening) against their opening night opponent. Honestly, I didn't care who the Cougars would be matched-up against. It really was of no consequence. The event, the atmosphere, the possibilities. I was going to make this the most incredible Volleyball spectacular next to an Olympic Games. So, about one week before the match began, all of the marketing elements that I had planned were in place including extensive media coverage from the Salt Lake City and Utah Valley media; the key placement of posters promoting this one single sports event and banner signage across the major boulevards in downtown Provo.
But let’s rewind back for just a moment … In 1979, I was the Assistant Editor for MountainWest Magazine, a monthly publication my parents had purchased after they too relocated from Southern California to Provo. During a story on the first NBA Basketball game in Utah, I received a press pass and sat on press row when the former New Orleans Jazz debuted as the Utah Jazz. Every fan that walked into the Salt Palace was given a two sided Commerative Scroll to honor this first NBA Game in the state of Utah.
Taking a cue from the NBA, I did the same thing for the first BYU Men’s Volleyball match. With McGown’s approval, I wrote a welcoming message from Carl McGown on one side of a piece of paper, with the home schedule of the Cougars on the back. I had about 2,000 copies made on light brown paper and recruited several students to help me personally roll each and every one of them – tied in the middle with a white ribbon.
***
I really had no doubt that the BYU student body would come out in full force and support McGown’s freshman NCAA team but I still used some of my limited budget to run full page ads in The Daily Universe (the daily student newspaper that I was Sports Editor in 1981), three days prior to opening night. As I walked around the campus, in the shadow of BYU vs. Pepperdine posters that I placed everywhere, I could see students sitting together reading the school newspaper and talking about what they were going to do that coming Friday night. Everyone was talking up the Volleyball match against Pepperdine. The buzz was again on and I had a sure-fire winner.
So, let’s fast-forward to Opening Night ...
I had arranged for a group of 20 student ticket-takers and ushers coming to work that evening and I asked them all to come wearing white shirts and black slacks. Then I handed them all a clip-on black bow tie as well as a black cummerbund. They all looked great. Just like models right out of a Brooks Brothers catalogue.
When you are managing a sporting event that started at 7 p.m., you have to be there at least by 4:00 p.m. to “work the room”.
Think of being a Pit Boss that works a casino.
The Pit Boss will show up hours before “game time” to survey his turf. In other words, I was the BYU Pit Boss and was there to walk the competition court and to look at everything. Look at every wall, every seat; to look at every possibly minute item that a fan or a working journalist might look at.
Nothing passes the eye of this Pit Boss!
Now, one special thing that I created that I didn’t want anyone to know about, or even see, before the match began.
Before I flew up to Provo to meet with McGown, I had 8 x 8 vinyl banners made with, and in the colors, name and with the logo of each team in the WIVA – the West Coast Intercollegiate Volleyball Association conglomerate that included teams from the Big West Conference, Western Athletic Conference, Pacific-10 Conference and the West Coast Conference. The WIVA had the very best men’s Volleyball teams in America and was a league that included perennial powerhouses UCLA, USC, Pepperdine, Stanford, San Diego State and now Brigham Young. When deciding to join the NCAA, Carl McGown really had no other choice but to petition the BYU athletic administration to join the WIVA as there was simply no other league in the country that the Cougars could join.
So, on one side of the Smith Fieldhouse were banners depicting the six teams that made up the “Western Division” of the WIVA: UCLA, USC, Long Beach State, UC Santa Barbara and BYU – with the “Eastern Division” being Loyola Marymount, Stanford, San Diego State, Cal State Northridge and the University of the Pacific. Each banner was in the primary colors of each school with each name in bold block letters.
Certainly nothing new on the BYU Campus as the athletics administration does the same for BYU Basketball in the 22,000 seat Marriott Center with every team of the West Coast Conference having the same style banners in the upper sections of that arena, so I figured it would be easily acceptable to the fans, administrators e when they first walked into the Smith Fieldhouse. It was my mantra to always ask forgiveness instead of permission – especially at a church-run university; and, if I’m allowed to say so, the banners really looked great and a variation of them are still up (as of this writing) at all BYU Men’s Volleyball matches in the Smith Fieldhouse.
With the building set and ready to go … and now about 90 minutes before the match was to begin, a truck pulled up just left of the front entrance and within moments fired up a Xenon 6, a well-known illumination addition to any Hollywood premier. The Xenon 6, unlike one single searchlight, comes equipped with four independent 5,000 watt searchlights. When these babies fired up, they lit up the entire Utah Valley and could be seen 30 miles away. Having lived most of my youth in Southern California, I knew these searchlights would not only pull people in from everywhere just to see what is going on but add to the exciting ambiance of the event. Curiosity is a wondrous thing as the entire lower campus of BYU was instantly transformed into Hollywood and Vine. You would not believe the number of people who were now clamoring to get into Smith Fieldhouse. When you work a special event, you want to keep people waiting as long as possible before you open the floodgates so on purpose we kept the doors closed as long as possible. Since it was open seating for this event at Smith Fieldhouse, once the door flew open it would be a title wave of thousands of people clambering to get inside.
A few other items to mention ...
During the 1950’s, Smith Fieldhouse, home to the BYU Basketball team was notorious for noise.
It is a confined space where the proverbial pin drop can be heard at the top of the stands when empty; but when you put 5,000 people inside Smith Fieldhouse, the building shakes to its foundation. At the top left side of the stands, on a platform, is an organ, with keyboard intact, still in place. I looked through some old athletic journals and found the name of the decades-long organist who played live music (including the BYU Cougar Fight Song) throughout each basketball game.
I called Ralph Zobell at BYU Sports Information, got his telephone
