The court at Oregon's new Matthew Knight Arena has inspired plenty of harsh reviews, one of which came from me. From its "deep in the woods" theme to the glare emitted from the surrounding video boards, the court's debut was almost universally panned. Now that the Ducks' new digs have been around for awhile, and perhaps grown on many, it's led some to wonder whether the court design will become a trend.
Over at The Dagger, a Yahoo! college basketball blog, one enterprising contributor broke out Photoshop and created some new designs for teams such as Hawaii, UNLV, LSU and Miami. The fake designs, however, are a bit more appealing than the Ducks' real one.
Overall, they're not bad at all, aside from Hawaii's board shorts gone bad design. Arizona's features cacti, UNLV's features interesting themes from the Las Vegas strip, Nebraska's looks like we're staring up from inside some kind of red-haired monster and Miami's is a nice voyage to the land of palm trees.
Should this be a trend, though? Boise State started it, using the Bronco design on its court, albeit in a less intrusive fashion. I'm of the school of thought that a court design shouldn't overshadow the play of the teams themselves. The talk at Matthew Knight Arena has been the floor, more-so than the Ducks' sudden turnaround in Pac-10 play.
It'll fade, sure, but I'd be opposed to seeing more teams adopt court designs that go far beyond the traditional hardwood.
For more on the court designs, check out what SB Nation's Ryan Hudson had to say.