The other day I was thinking about how many different things there are going on during one of the home basketball games at Monmouth University. Since this is my little spot on the interwebs to make comments about random things, I thought I would put together these random comments about my observations from a season’s worth of home games at the MAC Center.

The Name “MAC Center”
And I guess I’ll start with the term “MAC Center.” If you don’t know already, MAC stands for Multipurpose Activity Center. Some might suggest that by using the term MAC Center I am, in essence, calling the arena the Multipurpose Activity Center Center. Not true. I choose to call it the MAC Center because I take the “M” from multipurpose and the “AC” from activity. Then I slap on the “Center” at the end of my made-up abbreviation and there you have it – the MAC Center!

The Cheerleaders & The Dance Team
Monmouth has a pretty large squad of cheerleaders. I didn’t realize that there were so many of them. And I have to give them credit for the excitement that they show even during the most sparsely attended home games. There’s also a one guy cheerleader who does some pretty amazing flips and jumps and what not. Very impressive.

Along with the cheerleaders comes the dance team. There aren’t as many dance team members, but they’re out there cheering along with the squad. They do a good job and between the cheerleaders and dancers, there really is a big built-in fan base at these home games.

The Pep Band
I went to Monmouth for four years and I’ve been involved on campus in one way or another ever since I graduated and I never knew that there was a pep band. It’s a small group and they sometimes blow out a flat note, but they’re a good addition to the games. Here’s hoping that they continue to hone their playing skills over the off-season so they can contribute a more varied set of songs to the games next year.

The Varsity Club
I’m lucky enough to have access to The Varsity Club up on the third floor of the MAC Center before the game, during the halftime, and after the game. It’s a cool place where fans of the team can sit back and have a few beers while they enjoy each other’s company. From a fundraising and public relations perspective, the folks who work at Monmouth use this place as a V.I.P. area – a place where they can really sell how the campus is coming along and why alumni and other donors should support the university. That makes perfect sense and everyone “gets it.”

But what I don’t understand is why Monmouth doesn’t always put its best foot forward in The Varsity Club. The people who work up there are friendly – they’re not the problem. The beverages that they sell up there are reasonably priced and the buffet is free – so pricing isn’t the problem. The problem is the quality of what is prepared for the buffet and the drinks. Okay, I understand that you can’t really improve on a can of soda, but you can certainly have cold bottles of water to distribute to fans instead of bottles that are room temperature. Talk about an amateur move!

What really gets me though, is the quality and quantity of the food they serve in the buffet. Last week we had two trays of hot food for about 150 people. One tray had kielbasa and sauerkraut (absolutely disgusting) and another tray had some form of macaroni and cheese (which was mushy and unappealing at best). Look, I know that Monmouth has their hands tied in terms of what food they want to serve because they have that ironclad contract with Aramark, but they can certainly serve a higher quality food that what we were given last week! And some people would say, “Hey man, the food is free. Enjoy it!” Bullshit. The food is not free. You have to donate a certain dollar amount in order to get upstairs. You would expect that not only would there be quality food up there, but that there would be enough of it for everyone who is in attendance.

I’ll give them this, though. Last weekend we were served Chick-Fil-A which was a major improvement over the insulting sauerkraut and kielbasa from the week before. Again, however, there were only a few trays of hot food and a ton of people upstairs looking for the buffet. Part of the problem is that there are all of these families with these gluttonous little kids who stack up gigantic piles of food on their plates during the first, second, and third trips to the buffet line. And this all happens within the first 15 minutes of The Varsity Club opening up so if you’re not there early, you literally get scraps to eat. However, you would expect that by the end of the season the MAC people would know what they are dealing with and have enough food prepared for everyone – even those who show up ten or fifteen minutes after the buffet opens up. Poor planning.

I don’t think anyone is looking for top of the line food at The Varsity Club, but the substandard quality and quantity of the food that they prepare is somewhat insulting.

MAC Center-Related Traffic
Before the MAC Center was built, some loudmouths in the West Long Branch community complained that it would create an unacceptable volume of traffic when there were home games. Well, those idiots were way off the mark. I didn’t encounter traffic once during the entire season and that includes during the first two home games where there were about 4,000 people in attendance at each game.

Overall, I was very pleased with this season at the MAC Center. It’s a fun place that really gives the university’s athletes a place to show off their skills. For once as an alumnus, I’m proud of what Monmouth University accomplished in building that arena. Good job!