College football stadiums

Papa John's Cardinal Stadium in Louisville was just built a decade or so ago, and its already going through an expansion.

 

Memorial Stadium held only 56,000; the Gophs have rarely threatened capacity in the Humpdome (63,000 IIRC).

Indiana's Memorial Stadium also has a capacity of 50,000 (also a 3/4 horseshoe like Minnesota's new TCB Stadium, theoretically expandable to 75-80,000 if they close out the end zone).

Over the last 15-20 years in almost all stadium construction projects, the trend has been to smaller capacities, restrict supply, create artificial scarcity, create sellouts, crank the ticket prices over the moon and concentrate on luxury boxes.

THEN, if you have a decade of solid sellouts, or close to it, and have a fairly decent idea you can sell out the extra seats, add another 10,000 or so.

The reason few brand new college football stadiums get built is that the teams can't pull the "build-us-a-new-stadium-or-we'll-skip-town" extortion technique now ubiquitous among all professional sports franchises.

So, instead of building brand new stadiums from scratch, the usual approach is to renovate and upgrade the old one.

Plus, many more college football stadiums have "legendary" status than those in the NFL. I think really only Lambeau Field has college-like cachet in the NFL. (The Coliseum might have, but that was a long time ago).

 

Akron is building a new football stadium, which, if I'm not mistaken, will be on campus. Desperately needed too. The old Rubber Bowl across town has some local historic cache, but it's best days are far away in the rearview mirror. And there's nothing like having your view of the field obstructed by the stadium's light posts, which are ON the field.

 

Hey, all I remembered was "It's spelled something like Stanford." I got most of the letters right.

 

Yeah, Fred G. Sanford Stadium. ;D

Seriously though, didn't Pittsburgh tear down old Pitt Stadium? I know they play their home games at Heinz Field now.

Oh, and one of my favorite stadiums for a game is Kenan Stadium at UNC. I believe there is a local ordinance that forbids the top of the stadium from ever exceeding the height of the tree level. It's kind of cool when you're walking through the woods and can't see the stadium until you come to a clearing.

 

Yes, they did tear down Pitt Stadium. They built the new basketball arena on that site. The football team shares Heinz Field and the UPMC practice facility on the South Side of Pittsburgh with the Steelers.

They got great facilities in the deal, but moving the games off campus sure hasn't helped attendance. Heinz Field isn't far from campus, but students have to drive or take a shuttle rather than just walk, so it has hurt attendance.

 

I don't know -- the glare from the aluminum bleachers always ruined my experience.

 

Sanford...



seats around 93,000 and is surrounded tightly by roads or buildings on every side. I don't think they'll ever add seats to the open-ish endzone...it offers nice views of sundown during night games and backs right up to a major campus artery. If anything...and this is pretty nuts...I could see them continuing the upper-upper deck around to the other endzone. It'd require them to build directly over a back road, though.

 

How long ago was it they added that third deck opposite the press box side? I went to a game there in 95, and those seats obviously weren't there. Has it just been in the last four years or so?

 

Highly unlikely, but not as impossible as you might think. The upper-upper deck was built between the end of the '02 season and mid-summer '03. Pain in the ass for a semester, but doable in an insane only-in-college-athletics sort of way.