Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 01:32:00

The 1956 US Olympic basketball team beat a Southwest Conference all-star side 90-66 to christen the floor - the largest basketball crowd the Dallas area had ever assembled. Moody Coliseum, on the Southern Methodist University campus in University Park, opened in November 1956 as the SMU Coliseum. The building was a leap: 230 feet wide and 414 feet long, sunk 10 feet below ground for sightlines and acoustics, the 2.5-million-dollar arena replaced a 3,000-seat gym with roughly 10,000 seats - the Mustangs marking their first home game there with a 113-36 demolition of McMurry College in December 1956. The name honours Galveston philanthropy: a one-million-dollar Moody Foundation gift renamed the building in 1965 for William Lewis Moody Jr., and the same foundation put 20 million toward the arena's next act half a century later. The professional cameo matters to league history: the Dallas Chaparrals of the ABA called Moody home before moving to San Antonio as the Spurs, and the Dallas Diamonds of the Women's Professional Basketball League followed - making the campus gym a footnote in two leagues' stories. The 2013 renovation modernised everything: a 47-million-dollar rebuild added suites, loge boxes, retractable courtside student seating, the Miller Event Center and video systems throughout, reopening on 4 January 2014 with a nationally televised upset of eventual national champion UConn - capacity now a tighter 7,000. Practical notes: the coliseum sits at Binkley and Airline on the SMU campus with game-day parking in the adjacent garages; the below-grade bowl keeps every seat close, concerts and commencements fill the non-basketball calendar, and the surrounding Snider Plaza restaurants handle the pre-game hour. The renovated complex runs to 167,000 square feet including the attached Miller Event Center, and the capacity arc tells the building's whole life: 9,305 seats at opening, 8,998 through the 2000s, and a deliberately tighter 7,000 today - trading raw count for suites, sightlines and the noise that made the rebuilt room an instant home-court advantage.