NCAA Division 1-A football stadiums (bandwidth warning)

[IanRitchie]

i'll repeat - if you want a stadium, vanderbilt is it.

bugger those insanely big places.

[alabakiwi]

What are you talking about?

[Simmo79]

Texas Christian in Fort Worth is doing a massive reno of its stadium. I think the overall capacity isn't going up that much and the new layout is pretty similar to the old one but it's quite impressive.

Plans: http://www.stadium.tcu.edu/

Current progress: http://www.killerfrogs.com/msgboard/ind ... pic=151362

[Jeffles]

The staged renovation is good for allowing matches to continue taking place there. The purple seats don't look too bad either. The cgi pics make them look ghastly but the real thing is not as offensive on the eye.

[Simmo79]

I've been neglectful of this thread and there's a lot of redevelopment and new stadiums being proposed or under construction at the "amateur" level in the US.

Notre Dame were runners-up in the national championship last season. So time to add a couple of decks of corporate boxes to each side of Notre Dame Stadium. Not sure that the artists impression on this page is the real deal or just a guess:



article:
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr- ... 15451.html

[Simmo79]

University of Nebraska has added 6k seats to Memorial Stadium. The seats are new levels of corporate boxes and an extra deck on top of the existing East stand. Stadium capacity is now 90k. Looks even taller and more impressive now:





Video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yHWG9gLUik

The Huskers are also building a brand new 15k capacity arena for basketball.


Article below is about the basketball team selling out the season in advance for the first time ever. The football team has had 50 consecutive seasons of sell-outs.

http://huskernsider.tumblr.com/post/495 ... first-step

The things public institutions can do when their credit ratings remain high and interest rates are low...

edit: a wee discussion on ticket demand for Husker football

With under 400 seats still unclaimed, it's unlikely that the sellout streak is in any real danger. You have to figure that this article alone should remind folks to get their requests in, and maybe even catch a few people who were unaware that the process had already begun. But I'm surprised that the requests aren't exceeding the supply at this point. Ticket sales were announced nearly a month ago, so I expected quite a rush of inquiries. It comes down to the definition of "rush."

This process isn't a "first come; first served" queue. You make your request and indicate how much you would be willing to donate to get tickets. It's an auction. Offer to donate a lot, and not only do you move to the head of the line, you'll get better seats. Maybe even seats elsewhere in the stadium through the natural evolution of ticketholders. Some people pass away, and others move away. Some no longer can afford them. There's probably even a handful of Bo Pelini "haters" who'll refuse to renew their tickets. (Like that is going to make any difference, but it's their choice...) Some may even upgrade their tickets to new club or skybox seats, freeing up good seats.

But it does raise the question about the size of Memorial Stadium. With attendance likely to top 90,000 this fall for each game, is this upper limits of the market? Sure, when a Wisconsin or Michigan comes to Lincoln, Nebraska could easily sell another 50,000 seats if they existed. But for South Dakota State, 90,000 is probably too many. I'm sure many people would prefer to spend their $56 on something other than those tickets, if they had a choice. (And no, when the choice is between all eight games or none moving forward, nobody is going to say no to the South Dakota State tickets.)

Does this expansion meet all of the demand for Nebraska football tickets? Or could Nebraska reasonably support a bigger stadium capacity for all home games?

http://www.cornnation.com/2013/2/27/403 ... all-market

[Simmo79]

speaking of cheap money...Texas A&M will spend $450m on their football facilities.

Kyle Field will get an expansion from 80k to 102k seats, a complete upgrade of the facilities and stadium facade, a couple of roofs and the ability to show everyone they have a bigger dick than the University of Texas.




Full discussion, video and more pics here: http://www.sbnation.com/college-footbal ... kyle-field

Edit: watch the video. The stadium will be very impressive... but Aggies are weird, right-wing people

Edit edit: interesting comment from a blog

We now have a stadium that divides the fan base into 5 distinct and discernable categories:

1. Students, who will have a milling about area highly visible to visitors, where they can watch the band come in, see the team roll on their Spirit Walk, meet up with buds, etc. These guys are still expected to yell like hell.

2. Recently graduated Former Students and visiting fans. Their seats are going to be relatively similar, as will the noise output per butt in seat, sort of.

3. More seasoned and well off Former Students, who will get to enter through the “Oh My God!” entrance, be able to see what you can aspire to for parking, seating, etc, will be able to sit in relative comfort with access to the incredible entrance way / museum / food court / pretty decent bathrooms (essential for guys with expanding prostates and worn out livers and bladders). Noise output for these guys won’t change much from what we have expected from this group before, but there will be more distractions for them.

4. Loaded Former Students who will shell out huge bucks for the right to sit between the 20 and 50 yard lines and gasp, the small to medium sized corporate sponsor seats that will be filled with “friends of Rome.” These guys will not have gone to A&M, and there will be a lot of them in the stadium. They will be sort of into the game, their seats will be rewards for knowing the guys with enough money to buy these seats as write offs, but not enough time or inclination to sit in them. These seat holders will be indistinquishable from those same corporate ticket holders at DKR, for example. And do not kid yourselves, there will be A LOT of these guys. We have a few of these now, but with a 30% increase in seating for a stadium that has only sold out for some games a year traditionally, A&M suits are going to AGGRESSIVELY market these. $450 million is a lot of mul-lah, and A&M would not be adding that many new seats without figuring how much more they can make per added seat.

5. The Oh My God, No One Can Have That Much Money crowd. These are the guys who are going to underwrite the whole schebang. Their will be one or two billionaires in this group, but most will be in the $150 to $500 million crowd, and of course you won’t be able to see them, they will be behind lots of glass and air conditioning. These will include the mega corporations.

Don’t kid yourselves guys, this upgrade will change the personality of the fan base in the stadium. How much that will be visible or discernable, only time will tell. This stadium is not designed as a center for football. Think of it sort of as a coliseum, the planned social / fund raising center of the university.

http://www.goodbullhunting.com/2013/5/1 ... esentation

[yob]

The expanded stadiums look awesome, but you'd think a lot of the seats in those stadiums are frankly sh*t. But I guess with college football you're there for the crowd more than the game.

[Timbo]

A&M will probably only hold bragging rights for a short time.

UT has announced they're taking Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium to 125,000 making it not only bigger than A&M, but the biggest football stadium in the US full stop.

[Simmo79]

Do you have a source for the announcement? I can't find anything.

[Boba Fett]

They might have enormous capacities, but geez most of those college stadiums look crap.

[Simmo79]

You misspelt 'awesome'

[yob]

Kyle Field render is awesome.

Nebraska... hideous. It's actually very hard to do render on large structures without it looking ghetto.

[Timbo]

Do you have a source for the announcement? I can't find anything.

I also have nothing official.

I was told this by an academic who's a visiting fellow at the university where I currently teach. He's from UT and we were talking about college football stadiums the other day. He did his doctorate there and was very proud of the fact UT would not be smaller for long.

[the crow]

kill it with fire...man that is one fugmo stadium