I got the chance to talk to Bobby "Slick" Leonard of the 1953 national championship team last week before he and his teammates were honored at halftime of the Hoosiers' win against Sam Houston State.
Leonard reminisced about his days at IU, including telling story after story of the season where he helped bring IU its second national championship, but he also had some strong opinions about the condition of IU's Assembly Hall.
As any fan who's been to a single game at Assembly Hall knows, the arena's seats go very high up without taking up much space; simply put: the stairs are crazy steep. It's amazing that no one (other than that one stripper) was trampled during IU's upset victor over Kentucky last season with all the students charging down from the heights of Assembly Hall.
I know I've tripped, or nearly done so, more than my fair share of times going up and down those steps in Assembly Hall, and I can't imagine how difficult it must be for someone like Leonard (80 years old) along with the rest of the elderly Hoosier season ticket holders to stay on their feet walking up and down those steep, tiny steps.
"Assembly Hall is Assembly Hall, but I'm all for building a new basketball arena, just for basketball," Leonard said. "It's a wonder, and maybe it has happened, but climbing down those babies, you better have something to hold on to; you better have something to hold on to, cause that's really steep.
"A good basketball arena is round, and the seats aren't so far from the floor, rather than taking them so straight up.
"Yeah, I'd like to see IU get a new arena."
There of course have been rumors about the IU athletic department building a new Assembly Hall - at least since I arrived on campus in the fall of 2010, and quite possibly longer than that. I doubt that the words of Leonard alone will change the minds of Fred Glass and the IU administrators, but if more former Hoosier athletes and fans start clamoring, it would be hard to imagine IU not taking it into consideration in the near future, especially with the prospective success of both the men's and women's programs in the near future.
