“I really like what we have the homecourt advantage,” Williams said the other day. “I love the tradition and history of Allen Fieldhouse. If there is ever gonna be a new place it won’t be when I am the coach, I’ll tell you that.”

Well, that takes care of that.

When it comes to basketball on Mount Oread, Williams wields an 800-pound hammer, so Allen Fieldhouse, we can assume, will be the home of the Jayhawks as long as Williams is KU’s head coach and that should be another decade at least.

In the meantime, we don’t need to worry about the venerable old building, five years away from its 50th birthday, crumbling to limestone dust. Heck, Allen Fieldhouse might contain more steel than the Golden Gate Bridge. I’m convinced if a tornado ever struck it, the vector would bounce off like a hunk of Flubber and disappear into the heavens before it reached Strong Hall.

Not that Allen Fieldhouse is such a great place to watch a basketball game. If you look out of the windows in the upper corners, for example, you can see Canada and Mexico. It may also be the largest arena in the country with the fewest chairback seats. Allen Fieldhouse has more planks than Payless Cashways.

Every time some other school builds a new arena, speculation arises about the future of Allen Fieldhouse. The latest round came on the heels of the Jayhawks’ first visit to Texas Tech’s United Spirit Arena.

What a beautiful place the Red Raiders call home. The aesthetically pleasing brick building cost more than $50 million and might be the signature structure on a campus that contains, oh, maybe 17 trees.

No way Texas Tech could use the United Spirit Arena for just basketball. In order to make it pay, the arena will also play host to concerts, exhibitions and, of course, rodeos. I would imagine lots of rodeos.

Meanwhile, Allen Fieldhouse is used for basketball. At one time, when the floor was dirt yes, that’s why it is called a fieldhouse track meets were also a staple. Shot putters, high jumpers and long jumpers would compete on the dirt while removable lower bleachers allowed runners to traverse a five-lane track.

Once upon a time, concerts were staged in Allen Fieldhouse, too. I never attended one, but they say the pitched roof made for dreadful acoustics, and I can believe it. But when the KU men’s basketball team is playing Missouri or Kansas State or some other rival in the fieldhouse, the decibels often reach the level of the takeoff of a 747.

Oklahoma State has doubled the capacity of ancient Gallagher-Iba Arena did you see it on TV Monday night? by building virtually straight up. The upper deck is no place to go if you suffer from vertigo. Reportedly, during the off-season, the upper echelons will used as a training ground for the school’s new mountain-goat curriculum.

Oklahoma is also planning expansion and renovation at the Noble Center where, believe it or not, fans on the sides are farther from the floor than any other arena in the Big 12.

Missouri, too, is talking about constructing a new home for the Tigers. Thank goodness. When the Hearnes Center opened in the early ’70s, it looked good compared to Brewer Fieldhouse, a shockingly inhospitable place that looked like a converted dairy barn. Now the Hearnes Center conveys a dowdy, bottom-line feeling.

Allen Fieldhouse is no architectural masterpiece, either, but the Jayhawks’ barn does have something no other Big 12 arena, with the possible exception of Gallagher-Iba, has.

Before it, you can use the words “tradition-rich.”