The first event I attended at the Alamodome was a boxing card featuring Julio Cesar Chavez and Pernell Whitaker in 1993, not long after the then mega-structure had opened. Seated in an upper balcony in a seat that at the time cost as much as a cheap season ticket for a National Football League team, I was in awe of the structure. That is, until the first bout began and I quickly realized that I would have been far better off watching the fight on pay-per-view than I was in a seat that seemed a football field length away from the ring.
Originally built with an unrealized vision of attracting an NFL franchise to San Antonio, the Alamodome has served in many other capacities over the years. The San Antonio Spurs gave it a try as their home court for nine seasons, finally giving up the location in favor of their current home in the state-of-the-art AT&T Center in a more central location which is better suited to basketball, both from a player and fan point of view.
The vacating of the arena by the Spurs freed up more dates for conventions, concerts, auto shows, and, in spite of its poor sight lines, numerous basketball tournaments that were difficult to schedule while the Spurs held a lease on the facility for the better part of each year. The National Basketball Association played its annual all-star game here in 1996 and The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) held its final four men's tournaments in the Alamodome in 1998, and the women's final four in 2002 and again in 2010. Following the 2010 women's tournament, When asked which of the eleven cities he had taken his team to for the final four tournament, Connecticut women's basketball coach, Geno Auriemma, was quick to praise San Antonio and the Alamodome. "This is a great town," Auriemma said in an interview posted in the San Antonio Express-News said, "I wish they could hold itere every year."
In spite of its long-range economic success, there is still the dream of an NFL team relocating to San Antonio. Following Hurricane Katrina, which partially destroyed the Superdome in New Orleans, the Saints played five games in the Alamodome, nearly filling the stadium to its 65,000 seat capacity on each visit.
For the time, football fans will have to settle for the Alamo Bowl, held at the end of each football season, various collegiate and high school football championship games, the annual U.S. Army All-American Bowl featuring top high school players from across the country, and the fledgling University of Texas at San Antonio football team, which will take the field at the Alamodome in the fall of 2011. I've already purchased four season tickets and look forward to our first national championship!
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