Here comes The Jack
By Aaron Kessler / Daily Progress staff writer
July 9, 2006

The Jack is ready.

Five years and $130 million after it was first envisioned, the largest indoor arena in the state of Virginia is finally complete.

The exterior includes the mandated "Jeffersonian" touches. The interior sports one of the most sophisticated setups in the country - complete with a 42,000-pound video scoreboard, 15,000 seats and athletic facilities that an NBA star would envy.

Richard Laurance, who directed the new John Paul Jones Arena’s construction, said one word has described people’s reaction: "Wow."

"That’s what usually comes out of their mouths," he said.

The arena is named for John Paul "Jack" Jones, whose son, Paul Tudor Jones II, pledged $40 million toward the arena’s construction.

The arena can accommodate everything from sporting events to circus acts - even monster trucks and motocross racing.

"All they need to do is bring in the dirt," Laurance said, standing on the floor of the new arena.

He pointed to the enormous "elephant door" at the far corner, which opens up straight to a large loading dock at the back of the building.

"Semis can pull straight in onto the floor, unload and then turn around and drive out," he said. "They never have to back up."

Neither, presumably, will the elephants.

But when University of Virginia alums opened their pocketbooks to fund the construction of the arena, they likely weren’t doing it to see Disney on Ice. They were thinking about something closer to home: Cavalier basketball.

And basketball they will get. John Paul Jones is a cathedral to athletics, with facilities that rival anything Laurance said he has ever seen at the college level.

"There’s nothing like it," he said. "You almost can’t believe it."

This is particularly evident in the practice facilities and locker rooms, decked out in fine woods and plush fabrics, which stretch out behind the main arena space.

There are no standard metal lockers for the home team here - only cherry and mahogany embossed with Cavalier logos, and tiled hot tubs that rise from the floor like altars to soothe the weary player.

The practice areas, with ceilings as high as the NBA’s Washington Wizards use, sport not only an entire full-size basketball court, but also an additional half-court setup for shooting practice and other drills.

And that’s just for the men.

The women’s team gets the same treatment on its side of the facility - meaning JPJ contains the equivalent of three basketball courts just for practice. If that’s not enough, there’s always that 15,000-seat arena next door where players can toss the ball around. Assuming Eric Clapton isn’t using it.

"So you can have a sold-out concert going on, while meanwhile the players can be running a full-court scrimmage game in here," Laurance said, standing on the practice court. "And then over there [on the half court] you can have a guy doing free throws at the same time."

The luxury doesn’t stop at the locker room door when it comes to the athletic facilities. The coaches and their assistants will work in offices that bring to mind the accoutrements of a law firm - carved mahogany furniture, glass coffee tables and leather couches.

The dining facilities are similarly well appointed, with seating for up to 300 and an on-site kitchen providing meals to the athletes as needed. The room can also double to host other events, as it did recently for a UVa donor reception.

A co-ed fitness center will soon be outfitted with about $500,000 worth of top-of-the-line equipment.

Ready to go

While the finishing touches are still being put on the practice facilities, the main arena has officially been turned over to SMG, an international arena management company that is overseeing operations at John Paul Jones.

SMG got the keys on Friday, which puts general manager Larry Wilson and his team in charge of running the Jack. And the arena, Wilson said, is ready for business.

"We could have an event here tonight," Wilson said. "If a promoter calls me and has something good, we’re ready to go."

SMG reports to Richard Kovatch, associate vice president for business operations at UVa.

"Up until now, [the arena] has been primarily considered a construction site," Kovatch said. "But effective July 7 it’s officially an occupied facility."

SMG will have 17 full-time employees working at John Paul Jones, and lately the staff has been keeping busy. Wilson said he has been working up to 90 hours a week, with normal days starting at 6 a.m. and including 10 to 15 meetings a day, not to mention the dozens of phone calls.

Wilson and SMG work with promoters from around the country to bring in regional and national acts. The first scheduled event is Aug. 1, when Cirque du Soleil will bring its show "Delirium" to the arena.

Wilson said that early on Cirque was originally scheduled to perform on July 8, but it later added tour dates on the East Coast and had to push back its Charlottesville appearance to August.

Events including concerts by the Dave Matthews Band and Kenny Chesney, along with professional wrestling and Disney on Ice, have already been scheduled as well. At least a half-dozen events beyond those already announced are also in the works, although Wilson declined to reveal who they are.

For those itching to get a peek at the arena, an open house is in the works.

"It’ll be an opportunity for the general public to stop by and see the arena," Kovatch said. "We’ll probably have some games for the kids, some free food." The date of the open house has not been announced yet.

Versatile site

One of the more impressive features of the arena, Wilson said, is its "flexibility."

"Look up there, do you see those curtains?" Wilson said, pointing to the ceiling. "We can curtain off thousands of seats if we want to … in any configuration."

A press of a button and almost the entire upper deck - some 5,000 seats - can be hidden.

Another set of curtains can be lowered to section off almost the entire arena, if necessary, creating the equivalent of a 1,200-seat theater with a small stage below.

"It really give us options when working with promoters," Wilson said, adding that more "intimate" shows can come in to play for a few thousand people without feeling lost in a large, empty space.

Wilson said the single largest factor in getting good entertainment to the arena will be ticket sales. The more promoters see their shows doing well in Charlottesville, the more they will return - and spread the word.

"It’s really all about the ticket sales, it’s almost like a mantra with me," he said. "People need to understand that’s the key."

Seating a science

And of course, tickets - and with them, seats - come at a premium when you’re talking about a new arena.

Nowhere is this more evident than when it comes to UVa basketball, where seat selection has been honed to a science, and big donors rule the day.

To date, about $115 million has been raised for the $129.8 million project.

The Virginia Athletics Foundation, whose mission is to raise funds for UVa athletics, led the charge to cull private money for the arena. The biggest lure? Seats.

Donors to John Paul Jones were actually asked to make two contributions - one "arena" gift and one "annual" gift.

Those with large "arena" contributions get first choice of which seats they want, while the "annual" contribution affects the number of seats a donor is eligible to purchase.

For $500,000, donors qualify for two "high-end" courtside chairs.

The Jack also has luxury suites, where occupants can entertain friends and clients.

The suites at John Paul Jones lease for five, seven or 10 years at a time - at a cost of between $65,000 and $75,000 a year, depending on the location.

Marilyn Wright, the suite director for the foundation, said interest in the suites was quite high.

"We sold all the suites without showing it to anyone," she said, adding that if people are interested in leasing a suite they’ll need to get in line.

"Call me in five years," Wright said.

In addition to providing a suite each to university President John T. Casteen III and Athletic Director Craig Littlepage - Casteen’s is actually a double - the university offered 17 suites for lease.

The list of suite-holders includes law firms Williams Mullen and Hunton & Williams, as well as local real estate mogul Coran Capshaw, who manages the Dave Matthews Band through his company Red Light Management.

But Laurance, who said the arena will be his last major project for the university, said you don’t have to spend a fortune to enjoy an event at the arena. Even from the upper levels, the view is "pretty darn good."

"There really isn’t a bad seat in the house," he said. "You always feel close."

Laurance, who will be on hand for the opening event Aug. 1, said he hopes the arena will stand the test of time. After a long career spent involved in nearly every major UVa building project in recent memory, he said he is pleased to have the Jack as his swan song.

"Will this place be out of date in 50 years? No way."

 

An arena full of possibilities
Cavs already reaping the benefits of JPJ
By Jerry Ratcliffe / Daily Progress sports editor
July 9, 2006

When Virginia men’s basketball coach Dave Leitao stands near center court at the new John Paul Jones Arena, he can’t help but get excited about the Cavaliers’ future. Same goes for women’s coach Debbie Ryan.

The 15,000-seat Taj Mahal of basketball, which opens its doors to the Wahoos this season, raises Virginia’s arena status from the third-smallest in the ACC (only recent newcomers Boston College and Miami feature smaller facilities) to the fourth-largest in the 12-team league (North Carolina, N.C. State and Maryland are bigger).

A tour of the building with Richard Laurence, director of the arena’s construction, and UVa hoops legend Barry Parkhill, who has spent much of the past four years raising money to pay for the place, quickly makes you keenly aware that you’re not in antiquated University Hall any more.

Everything is state-of-the-art. What former Virginia athletic director and basketball coach Terry Holland stressed most when JPJ was first talked about was practice facilities for the men’s and women’s teams.

Mission accomplished.

When VMDO architect Bob Moje traveled the nation with Holland and other Virginia officials to critique other new arenas, Moje wanted to get seats as close to the court as possible to create an intimidating atmosphere to visiting teams. His idea was to make JPJ the Cameron Indoor Stadium of the 2000s.

Mission accomplished.

“You look around the place and it starts to get you thinking about the possibilities,” Leitao said this week while taking a brief break from the recruiting trail. “You start thinking about the crowds and the noise that could get generated and how crazy things could get inside this building.”

While U-Hall was nearly half the size (8,864), it could be a rowdy place to play. Maryland players used to dread coming to the place. No wonder Leitao wonders what a crowd almost twice as large could do.

But that’s not the only thing he thinks about when he ponders the advantages of such a facility. He and Ryan both think “recruiting.”

“The new arena has already helped a lot because being new ourselves (UVa’s men’s staff is only in its second year of directing the program), we have to talk more about the future than the present and this building speaks to our future and where we’re going,” Leitao said. “Not only from the aesthetic value of the place, but the commitment.”

For years, Virginia basketball fans perceived a lack of commitment to the program. By investing approximately $130 million into the arena project, UVa has made a strong statement that basketball is important to the school.

“That’s been a great help in trying to sell the future of the program,” Leitao said.

He has personally taken some prospects through the arena and gets what he describes as a phenomenal reaction from them.

“The vastness of the building and them perhaps seeing themselves in our uniform, playing on that court, has been apparent,” the coach said. “When you’re dealing with young people, 17 years old or so, they’re extremely impressionable, so you’re giving them something to be impressionable about.”

Obviously, Leitao is already seeing results.

Rivals, a company that reports on national college football and basketball recruiting, rated all three members of UVa’s incoming hoops class among the country’s top 115 prospects: Jamil Tucker (No. 60), Will Harris (90), and Solomon Tat (114). The Cavaliers already have a commitment for the following class from its chief target, Eric Wallace, a 6-foot-7 small forward from Kernersville, N.C., who is rated the No. 105 player in the nation by Rivals.

“With Tucker, Harris and Tat, UVa is looking like they are ready to turn the corner in the ACC,” said Rivals national recruiting analyst Justin Young. “Leitao and his staff wasted little time targeting and landing players that used to go to other schools.”

A little more than a year ago, Leitao sat in his cramped office at U-Hall and couldn’t help but think about his early days at the University of Connecticut when he was hired as an assistant to his mentor Jim Calhoun. They took over a program that was nearly bankrupt with horrible facilities and cramped and dingy work spaces.

Instead, they sold the future of the program and

didn’t have anything nearly the equal of JPJ to offer. But UConn is now one of the nation’s elite programs.

The Virginia coach hasn’t spent much time in his new digs, which is just now getting the finishing touches, but his office alone may be as large as the entire men’s basketball offices at U-Hall.

“A good friend of mine always told me that in order to be big time, you have to act big time,” Leitao said. “Facilities, whether they’re offices or other parts of the building, shows people how serious we are about all this and what level we’re trying to maintain. Practice courts, offices, everything is awe-inspiring and will do nothing but help our cause.”

Ryan, who was on a recruiting trip and couldn’t be reached for comment, would probably ditto all of her counterpart’s statements, and her program has also attracted a major incoming recruit that she hopes is a leap toward returning UVa women’s hoops to the upper echelon of the conference.

Both coaches know better than anyone else, that while the facility may be second to none in college basketball and built for the intimidation factor, that nothing really gets the job done except the players who wear “Virginia” emblazoned upon their chests.

“We have to do our part to put the right players on the court, so the building can be the icing on the cake and not the substance of what we’re doing here,” Leitao said. “It’s all about the players on the court, not the icing.”

JPJ is some pretty nice icing.

 

Virginia hires Virginian as basketball assistant
Courtney aims to boost Cavaliers' hoops profile Leitao hoping new aide can help Cavs increase exposure in the Washington market
BY JEFF WHITE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Jul 8, 2006

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- He grew up in Northern Virginia and later spent nine seasons as an assistant basketball coach at George Mason University. Those are two reasons Bill Courtney appealed to Dave Leitao.

Heading into his second season as the head coach at the University of Virginia, Leitao knows he needs to raise his program's profile around the state and in the Washington area, and he expects Courtney, 36, to help on that front.

U.Va. announced yesterday that Courtney, a 1988 graduate of Springfield's Robert E. Lee High, has been hired to replace Gene Cross, who left in May to become an assistant at Notre Dame.

Leitao also considered Richmond native Jason Williford, a former U.Va. starter who is an assistant at American University.

Courtney, who moved from Wisconsin to Alexandria when he was 6, spent the 2005-06 season at Providence. Leaving the Big East school is difficult, Courtney said yesterday, "because I like people here and I like the direction the program is headed. But it's a great opportunity for me and my family."

Courtney and his wife, Gina, who played basketball at Marymount University in Arlington, have two sons: 5-year-old Bill and 3-year-old Derek.

When Courtney was a 12th-grader, Lee upset Richmond's John Marshall High in the semifinals of the 1988 state Group AAA tournament. After graduating from Lee, Courtney enrolled at Bucknell. Asked if U.Va. recruited him out of high school, Courtney laughed and said, "Nah, I wasn't good enough. I thought I was, but nobody else did."

At Bucknell, he was a two-time all-Patriot League pick. Courtney moved into college coaching in 1995, joining Chris Knoche's staff at American University as an assistant.

"Perhaps the best one I've ever dealt with is Bill Courtney," Knoche said yesterday. "He's unbelievable across the board. Bill knows the game cold, and he develops an instant rapport with anyone he comes into contact with."

Courtney left American after one season to join Jim Larranaga's staff at Bowling Green, then moved to GMU with Larranaga in 1996. Courtney was promoted to associate head coach in 2002 and helped recruit the players who led Mason to the Final Four this year.

He'll go on the road for U.Va. later this month. Courtney expects the new John Paul Jones Arena to help immensely with prospects.

"I tell you this, when I was on my visit, feeling like a recruit, I was ready to commit," he said.
 

Tech one-day camp includes Hampton's Taylor
Coach says Courtney headed to Virginia
Doug Doughty

Depending on how they are displayed or coded, some items that are published in The Roanoke Times do not routinely appear in the online edition.

Such was the case with the football commitment Virginia Tech received Wednesday night from Blake DeChristopher, a 6-foot-6, 305-pound offensive lineman from Clover Hill High School in Midlothian.

DeChristopher’s commitment to the Hokies was not considered a surprise, given that most recruiting services viewed him as a Tech “lean,” but his quotes were somewhat telling.

“No offense to Virginia because Virginia has a good football program,” DeChristopher said, “but Tech brings it every year.”

I don’t think he meant that Virginia doesn’t bring it. Tech just brings it better. The won-loss records and high-profile bowl appearances say that.

“Absolutely, that was a factor,” DeChristopher said.

What has to concern Virginia is DeChristopher’s admission that he had been a UVa fan prior to becoming a sought-after recruit.

On the other hand, the Cavaliers can take some comfort in the fact that it wasn’t a slam dunk. DeChristopher turned down scholarship offers from Ohio State and Maryland in narrowing his choices to Tech and UVa.

“It was tight with UVa because he went to UVa a couple of weeks ago [for the Cavaliers’ junior day],” Clover Hill coach Sean O’Hare said.

“He was kind of leaning to Tech the whole day. But, after going to UVa, he was like, ‘Man, this is going to be a tough decision.'

“I think it was more than [Tech’s better record]. He called me after he left Tech and said, ‘I really had the feeling that was the place for me. I felt very comfortable. Everything just felt right.’

“He said, ‘I know this is it.’ “

O’HARE HAS BEEN the head coach at Clover Hill for five seasons and has not had another Division I-A player during that time.

Media gadfly Jeff White, a former prep editor of the Richmond News-Leader before moving to Albemarle County and becoming a member of the landed gentry, said that former Clover Hill defensive back Buddy Omohundro played at UVa.

Exhaustive research reveals that Clover Hill graduate Carl Edward “Buddy” Omohundro Jr. was a three-year UVa letterman from 1989-91. His father, Carl Edward Omohundro Sr., played football at Virginia Tech, according to the 1991 UVa media guide, although Carl Sr. is not listed among former Tech lettermen in the 2004 Tech media guide.

(We refer to the 2004 Tech media guide because, in 2005, the NCAA mandated that all media guides be cut to 208 pages. In trimming their guides from a respective 328 and 296 pages, UVa and Tech both eliminated the former lettermen’s section – a bad move on both schools’ part).

But, back to DeChristopher. He wasn’t on The Roanoke Times’ list of the top 25 juniors in the state – a list that is little more than a starting point – and I don’t remember hearing his name before the past two months.

Apparently, his stock soared after he attended a “combine” at Lake Taylor High School in Norfolk. DeChristopher, a starter on both sides of the ball since his sophomore year, has a “max” of 425 pounds in the bench press.

“Last year, he was 6-4 or 6-4 ½ and 270,” O’Hare said. “With offseason work and God stepping in, he’s gotten to 305 and incredibly strong. He moves better than he did last year. He got very explosive with the shot put. Tech was very interested in that.”

DeChristopher has thrown the shot as far as 55 feet and was third in the Group AAA state meet.

“He was on the radar because of his size and was getting better every year,” O’Hare said. “I think what people were looking for was explosiveness. Once he passed that magical 6-5 mark and he was a solid 300 pounds …

“Then, he went to Lake Taylor. We took six kids down there. It’s very professionally done. They have the laser equipment down there. Velocity Sports does all the timing. Also, I like to get them exposure in other areas.”

DECHRISTOPHER WILL BE back in Blacksburg this weekend for a one-day camp that had an early registration of 150, with as many as 20 already armed with Tech offers.

“Campers” will include the state’s No. 1-ranked prospect, quarterback Tyrod Taylor from Hampton High School, as well as Kemspville High School wide receiver Jay Smith, rated one of the country’s top 100 prospects by rivals.com.

Also headed to Blacksburg, among top in-state prospects, are Varina quarterback-defensive back Davon Morgan, Hylton offensive lineman William Alvarez and Denbigh offensive lineman Jaymes Brooks.

VIRGINIA MEN’S BASKETBALL coach Dave Leitao said Thursday that recruit Solomon Tat was enrolled in UVa’s Summer Transition program, a fairly good sign that Tat, who never signed a letter-of-intent, will play for the Cavaliers in 2006-2007.

Leitao said there “were major hurdles to jump over,” an apparent reference to the visa issues that threatened to require Tat to return to Nigeria, but the finish line apparently is in sight. Tat still needs to be approved by the NCAA Clearinghouse, but that is the case with all recruits.

Leitao also said that he hoped by the end of the weekend to have an announcement on his new assistant coach, believed to be Bill Courtney from Providence. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t remember a UVa basketball assistant with Courtney’s northern Virginia roots.

Providence coach Tim Welsh acknowledged he would be losing Courtney earlier this week when he told the Providence Journal, “Bill did a great job for us in the one year he was here and certainly will be missed.”

Courtney spent nine years at George Mason and is given credit for recruiting many of the players on the Patriots’ team that reached the Final Four this past season.”

 

ACC observes TV changes
While the conference is locked up in its TV deals through the decade, officials have interest in what others leagues are doing.
By Rob Daniels | Landmark News Service

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- With several years remaining on its current TV deals, the ACC isn't in a position to follow the Big Ten Conference's lead and create a league-owned and operated channel any time soon, Commissioner John Swofford said last week.

Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany recently announced plans for a network that will be available on DirecTV and will broadcast live games in several sports. The decision, inspired by the NFL's in-house network, is considered a bold -- if exploratory -- step toward the future of sports TV distribution in a perpetually changing marketplace. And it was hastened in part by timing, as the Big Ten's national television deals are near their end and the conference sought to try another option while renewing its relationships with ABC and ESPN.

The ACC, on the other hand, has television contracts that run through 2010 in football and 2011 in men's basketball and can't ponder new horizons quite yet. So it will watch how the Big Ten does until at least 2008. Renewal talks usually start two years before the end of existing contracts.

"I was with Jim last week, and I told him, 'congratulations,'" Swofford said of his fellow commissioner. "It's one of those things where the Big Ten will be a trailblazer, and that's to their credit. The rest of us will get to learn a bit from what they do because of the timing."

Swofford said any change in TV relationships involves risk because it ultimately takes some high-demand live events from free, over-the-air syndication packages and places them on the new channel. And any new channel initially faces distribution and availability obstacles. DirecTV, while the nation's most popular satellite service, only has 15 million customers -- about one in seven households.

A cautionary tale involves the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats. The team's owner, Robert Johnson, is considered a TV innovator who built Black Entertainment Television from an idea to prominence, but even he couldn't make a Bobcats-fronted channel work on cable.

"You make some choices," Swofford said. "You gain some things and you give up others. Obviously, the Big Ten isn't moving away from their ESPN and ABC contracts; they're even expanding them. But they will have some events on the Big Ten channel. They'll have some things on there that were on cable or in syndication that will no longer be there. But they'll also have events that weren't getting any exposure."

Technology and its impact on the consumer are at the forefront of the ACC's thinking these days, even if the conference TV network concept is down the road.

One element is the distribution of live game broadcasts via the Internet, into which the league delved in a limited fashion in 2005-06. The most visible example was the availability of some ACC Tournament men's basketball games in markets where they weren't guaranteed to be shown on television. Swofford said he anticipates an increase in the number of TV broadcasts simulcast on the Web during the 2006-07 school year, but the precise number won't be known until August or September.

The league addressed the burgeoning issue of Internet telecasts in 1999 when it made its basketball arrangement with Raycom and its corporate partner at the time, Jefferson-Pilot. (JP was acquired by Lincoln Financial in 2005.) The Raycom-Lincoln Financial partnership has rights to income derived from the Internet programming.

As to the long term, ESPN recently launched a service that offers streaming video to mobile phones. So, how long before a fan can watch a game in the palm of his hand?

"Probably sooner than we think. That's my answer to that," Swofford said. "There are quality questions about video streaming, and if you're going to do it, you need to do it well. And preferably from the beginning.

"Things are changing so rapidly that it's a real challenge for institutions and conferences and television partners to keep up with those changes and where these things may be leading us."