A scoreboard longtime Indiana University basketball fans will recognize is getting back in the game.
The scoreboards originally hung in the IU Fieldhouse in the 1960s, then moved to Simon Skjodt Assembly when it opened in 1971. They hung over both ends of the court until IU installed a new video scoreboard above center court.
The scoreboards ended up keeping score and time in the Mellencamp Pavilion for IU football practices.
Finally, in August of 2020, IU auctioned the scoreboards off.
Steve Engel, a manager at the Upstairs Pub, knew he wanted one.
“I didn't know where it was gonna go,” Engel said. “I just knew we had a scoreboard and sooner or later we figure out something to do with it. It belongs in Bloomington.”
Engel said he paid a little more than $9,000 for one of the scoreboards at the auction. It’s 18 feet long and weighs 800 pounds.
In the on-going construction at the Upstairs Pub, the height of the roof had to be raised by six feet to accommodate the scoreboard.
Crews used a crane to hoist the scoreboard over the building and into a hole in the roof in what will be the West Bar.
The scoreboard is not the only IU artifact going above the new bar. When IU sold off sections of the basketball court used from 1928 to 1960, Engel grabbed six of them.
He’s having three sections installed on both sides of the scoreboard.
“So, you're going to have about eight feet of basketball floor, this 18-foot scoreboard and then another eight feet of old IU basketball floor on the wall back behind the bar,” he said.
Engel said the project is scheduled to be finished sometime in late August.
“I think that this is a neat IU artifact that belongs on Kirkwood and belong set up in a high visible place on Kirkwood, and, hopefully, we're putting it in to really good use,” he said.
Engel said the other scoreboard up for auction was bought by a fan, who installed it in his home in South Carolina.
