Fuming at What Isn’t in a Name
Even the harshest critics agree it could have been worse.
The billionaire basketball fans who put up $25 million to build an arena for their beloved University of Missouri Tigers could have named the complex after a pet. Or one of their many horses.
Or how about the Wal-Mart Athletic Complex, to honor the business behind the donors’ nearly $3 billion in net worth?
Instead, Bill and Nancy Laurie announced last month that the Tigers would play their next home season at the luxurious Paige Sports Arena. The name has a classy ring to it. But many on campus are fuming because the complex is named after the Lauries’ 22-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Paige, who chose to attend the University of Southern California rather than her hometown Mizzou.
“To name it after a daughter who doesn’t even go here? That’s pushing it,” said Rusty Groth, a graduate student.
“The name should have something to do with someone who had something to do with the university,” freshman Jacob Griesenauer said. “A coach who donated a lot of time and effort to the basketball program would make more sense.”
Neither Bill nor Nancy Laurie attended college here; both graduated from Memphis State University. But Bill Laurie grew up in rural Missouri, and soon after marrying, the couple settled in this central Missouri town on a 350-acre farm where they breed appaloosa horses.
Passionate sports fans, they also own the NHL’s St. Louis Blues and the hockey team’s arena, the Savvis Center. They named the holding company for those two assets Paige Sports Entertainment, after their only child.
Nancy Laurie is the daughter of Bud Walton, the business partner and brother of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. Forbes magazine recently ranked her 61st on its list of richest Americans.
The Lauries have donated to local philanthropies for years, helping fund a cancer research center, a shelter for abused women and a children’s hospital. They have also been generous with the university. They endowed the E. Paige Laurie Professorship for the Equine Center at the School of Veterinary Medicine and gave money for a new performing arts center on campus.
But the family is most famous at this sports-crazy college for their fervent -- some say intrusive -- backing of the Tiger basketball team.
Online forums for Mizzou fans buzz with speculation that Bill Laurie -- a onetime point guard who led his Memphis team to the NCAA Championship game in 1973 -- meddles too much with the basketball program, to the point of interfering with coaching decisions.
Many were also irate when he and his wife donated $25 million in 2001 to kick-start construction of the arena, with the understanding that the state would sell $35 million in bonds to help finance the rest. (An additional $15 million came from smaller private donations.)
Missouri at the time was in the grips of a budget crisis so severe that the governor had warned state colleges that they might not receive their monthly appropriations for most of the spring and summer. Yet after intense lobbying from the university, the Legislature approved the bond issue. Somewhat reluctantly, Gov. Bob Holden, a Democrat, signed it.
The new arena, to be completed by October, will feature a luxury suite at center court for the Laurie family. A private lounge will be set aside for the exclusive use of donors who pledge at least $2,000 per seat; two dozen additional suites with catered food will also be available.
University officials say the swank arena will boost their chances of attracting top recruits. That promise alone is enough to win over some students. As Maria Huggins, a sophomore, put it: “We should get better players, which will bring in more revenue, which will be good for the university in the long run.”
Others, however, remain angry that the state put up so much money for the arena in such tight times, especially when the existing Hearnes Center (named for a former governor) was in good shape. Naming the stadium after someone with no connection to the college only made tempers worse, especially among Tiger fans disappointed by Mizzou’s failure this year to make the NCAA tournament for the first time since the mid-1990s.
Calling the stadium Paige is “a slap in the face of every coach [and] player,” one fuming alumnus wrote on a message board set up by the Kansas City Star. “Missouri wasn’t good enough for her to attend as a student, so naming the new center after her is totally ridiculous.”
A few on campus and in the online forums appealed for calm, arguing that the Lauries’ donation gave them the right to name the arena whatever they pleased. Chad Moller, spokesman for the school’s athletic department, said he had received close to 40 e-mails about the issue, with the balance of comments “tilted more toward those who do not support the name.”
Bill Laurie did not return a call seeking comment. In a statement released by the university, he and his wife described themselves as “supporters of education and athletics” and as “very proud” parents. “We could not be happier that the University would combine those two important parts of our lives in naming this new facility the Paige Sports Arena.”
To which Brianna Marler, a senior, had this response: “Obviously, money talks.”