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Former American Press sportswriter Carl Dubois blogs about the games people play, in and out of sports, and the people you meet between and outside the lines.

Carl is an award-winning reporter and columnist living in the Willamette Valley in northwest Oregon, near Portland. He is sports editor of the News-Register newspaper in McMinnville, Ore.

Down goes the (RCA) Dome

Posted December 20, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Filed Under Sports | Leave a Comment

BATON ROUGE — It’ll always be the Hoosier Dome to me, but the RCA Dome is no more.

Watch its implosion in this video.

I was only inside the Dome about five or six times, all of those for the 2000 Final Four. I watched Mateen Cleaves and Michigan State defeat Florida for the national championship, that after Michigan State’s victory against Wisconsin and Florida’s victory against North Carolina in the semifinals.

That Wisconsin team played a physical style of basketball that was something close to Big Ten football on hardwood, and the Badgers defeated LSU in the Tigers’ first Sweet 16 appearance under John Brady. The dream season for Wisconsin ended in the RCA Dome.

The trip was as fun as a working trip can be. I stayed within walking distance of the dome, and now I wonder how much debris made it onto that hotel during the demolition.

Walking to the Dome on the day of the semifinals, I passed thousands of fans, some of whom asked how much I’d charge them for the credential (press pass) around my neck. My answer was always the same.

“Because it would be an ethical lapse serious enough to keep me from ever working again in the newspaper business, you’d have to give me … oh, a million dollars.”

That ended the negotiations.

Bob Huggins was there, as all coaches are, and I asked him to repeat what he’d said a few days earlier when asked the one person he’d want in his foxhole if he ever went into battle.

“Ron Everhart,” he said, referring to the former McNeese State basketball coach. Both are West Virginia natives, and they are longtime friends.

You know you’re getting old when a stadium built during your early adulthood is outdated and is destroyed. This isn’t the first one for me.

I hate to think about the ones to come.

If you’re watching the NFL Network right now, you’re watching the last game at Texas Stadium. I don’t have to tell you about Yankee Stadium, about Alex Box Stadium, about others soon to join them.

It is fun, though, to watch the implosion videos. Why is that? Eh, who cares. Let’s watch the RCA Dome go down again.

Boom goes the dynamite.