Inaugural Student Madness Opens the Season in Style
By: Connor Dacus
 

Memphis Student Madness was held at the Elma Roane Fieldhouse last week to mark the beginning of
the men’s and women’s college basketball season for the Memphis Tigers.

For the first time, the University of Memphis hosted Memphis Madness as a student-only event. Rather
than hosting the event at the FedExForum like in the past, this year the event was on campus at Elma
Roane Fieldhouse.

Elma Roane Fieldhouse holds 2,565 and was sold out for the inaugural Student Madness. Although the
capacity of the Elma Roane Fieldhouse does not match that of the FedExForum, Student Madness gave
the opportunity to share the gameday experience with more students who would not have made the
trip to the FedExForum.

Luke Argo, a sophomore finance major at the University of Memphis, attended the event and shared his
thoughts on the changes.

“I really enjoyed the atmosphere with it being all students this year,” Argo said “I also liked that it was
on campus, so it wasn’t a hassle to go to.”

Memphis Madness was an annual event to celebrate the beginning of the Memphis Tigers basketball
season at the University of Memphis. Introductions of the men’s and women’s basketball teams, three-
point contests, dunk contests and intersquad scrimmages between the athletes drew big crowds of over
18,000.

The change in scenery from the FedExForum to Elma Roane Fieldhouse was made mostly to attract
more students to come and support the basketball teams. With this change, students were involved in
activities like teaming up with the athletes in the three-point contest and judging the dunk contest.
Corey Goldstein, the assistant of marketing and gameday operations at the University of Memphis,
played a big part in the organization of Student Madness.

“We are in an interesting position where our two biggest sports play off campus, so engaging the
student is definitely a challenge,” Goldstein said “We thought that Student Madness would be a way to
really hone in on that.”

“We were giving away t-shirts and free pizza, which is a more student focused thing,” Goldstein said,
“engaging them in contests was also a bigger part of that.”

The main part of marketing to students was getting Memphis rapper, Big Boogie, to perform at this
year’s event.

“You still need that non basketball piece that’s going to draw student’s in,” Goldstein said.

With many ways this event has appeared such as Memphis Madness, last year’s “Block Party”, and this
years Student Madness, there has been questions to what we could see in the future.

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“I certainly think that the potential is there to move forward next year with an event that’s like that or
something that is similar,” Goldstein said.