Arena is gem in state capital

COLUMBUS -- A: Leather seats in the premium loge boxes.
Q: Name a most striking feature of the state-of-the-art Nationwide Arena.
Honorable mention answers include a practice ice rink inside the building and the spacious entry, lobby and concourses.
Ohio's state capital is a bustling, growing place with plenty for sports fans to choose. Baseball fans can see the New York Yankees' Triple A prospects play at Cooper Stadium.
The Columbus Crew team of Major League Soccer has its own facility right off Interstate 71.
And OSU sparkles with its 2-year-old Schottenstein Center, the home for the Buckeyes' basketball and ice hockey teams. Next door is Bill Davis Field, the home of the Buckeyes' baseball team. Right down the street is Ohio Stadium, home of Jim Tressel's Buckeyes.
Key player: Best of all, though, is the six-month-old Nationwide Arena in the heart of the city. Located downtown next to where the old Ohio Penitentiary once stood, Nationwide Arena is a key player in the growth of Columbus' blossoming downtown and nightlife scene.
The main tenant of the new arena is the Columbus Blue Jackets of the National Hockey League.
Word is that when the Pittsburgh Penguins played the expansion Blue Jackets at Nationwide last month, team executives took a long, hard look at this $150 million gem to make notes on what a new arena should contain.
Pittsburgh should be so lucky. It couldn't pick a better facility to study.
Each concourse has a corporate sponsor trying to outdo the other. There's a goalie mask display on one wing. Another has a glass booth to display the hats fans throw on the ice to celebrate hat tricks by the Blue Jackets.
Licenses: Invested money is what gives Nationwide its sparkle. The Blue Jackets sold about 12,000 personal seat licenses for a sport that has, until now, never enjoyed a major success in Ohio.
Twenty of the Blue Jackets' 36 home games have been sellouts. Tickets are scarce for the remaining five games of the 2000-01 season.
Credit should go to the marketing and promotion staff who had the difficult task of selling an unfamiliar sport to skeptical fans.
Despite the Blue Jackets' lack of a superstar, their games have been competitive. At 10 games below .500, the Blue Jackets have performed better than most expected.
Fun: The game breaks are fun. My family enjoyed "Kiss Kam" and "Celebrity Look Alike" the most.
Saturday's game was billed as "St. Jackets' Day," with green souvenir pucks on sale in the gift shop.
The upscale merchandise includes leather bags and replica jerseys signed by the players. I swear an autographed Ron Tugnutt jersey was screaming at me to take it home. The jersey was overruled.
Promotion: Penguins fans remember when Wendy's restaurants offered free chili when the pre-Stanley Cup Pens would score seven goals in a game. The Blue Jackets have the same promotion, but it only takes three goals to hear the "Chili Chant."
The Blue Jackets are hoping they will have more of an impact in Northeast Ohio. Although Fox Sports Ohio carries 65 games, those telecasts have been blacked out here because the Penguins own the broadcast rights in Mahoning and Trumbull counties.
Marc Gregory, a 1990 Mooney High graduate who is the Blue Jackets' director of advertising and promotions, says they are hoping to reach of compromise this summer with Mario Lemieux's team that would lift the blackouts.
The way ice hockey has taken off in Columbus, fans planning to attend a game next season should plan on acting fast when tickets go on sale in late summer. Judging by how much fun they are having inside Nationwide Arena, seats should disappear rapidly.
Not to mention Tugnutt jerseys.
XTom Williams covers the National Hockey League for The Vindicator.