If you can believe it….

[DS2001]

I think we have bigger crowds than Duke or UCLA.
Their stadiums are virtually empty.

[Johnmn555]

Duke wasted a tremendous amount of money on their stadium. There crowds are as bad as ever (ie worse than ours). Northwestern is beclowning itself by spending $800 million on a new stadium.

[charlestonalum]

Duke wasted a tremendous amount of money on their stadium. There crowds are as bad as ever (ie worse than ours). Northwestern is beclowning itself by spending $800 million on a new stadium.

this is when you know there is more dollars around than sense

[AuricGoldfinger]

Duke has always been a very bad draw. UCLA doesn't attract many fans nowadays, but has some unique issues associated with attendance.

[Nashmann]

So what should/could be done with the Dud???

[VandyfanKY]

So what should/could be done with the Dud???

The end zone renovations will bring a lot, including twin video boards (similar to the new soccer stadium), improved power, lighting, communications, and cell phone coverage as well as some very attractive seating. Unfortunately, those improvements will make a future renovation of the east side more problematic and expensive once construction access is so restricted. Given that side is primarily visitor seating I don't expect any structural changes for a long time.

Unless the university can expand over Natchez Trace, rebuilding the west side to modern seating standards (33 inches between rows as opposed to our 24 inches), would drop the west side capacity from roughly 15,000 to something like 8,800. Vandy owns the land on the opposite side of Natchez Trace so some large project might allow for expanding and upgrading the west side while realigning the street itself.

One low cost option to improve existing seating is to mark each seat as being 20 inches wide rather than 18 inches. That would cut capacity by 10 percent where it was done, but would improve the game day experience for the average fan.

The Vandy United Improvements will be impressive and practical. Missouri and Utah completed similar projects, and that has improved the game atmosphere at both stadiums.

[Seadog73]

I can't remember, has Colorado been any good since Dinardo was their OC?

[charlestonalum]

Duke is 4-1 and nobody attends games: that shoots down theories thst a new stadium and winning fill stadia of small privte universities. We should spend money on things that enrich the athletes' overall experience, help them win, and allow them to play well, win in the big state school stadia. It is a false premise that we need a big new stadium to be competitive. As for fan experience, winning is the best improvement for that, but don't expect that to fill the Dud unless vs a SEC team when most of the stands are full of opponent fans that do bring their money to town.

[AuricGoldfinger]

I can't remember, has Colorado been any good since Dinardo was their OC?

Colorado was a very solid program through the 1990s. In the spring Stewart Mandel of The Athletic did a lengthy piece on the descent of the program in the last 20 years (PREMIUM: https://theathletic.com/3253765/2022/04 ... 2-decline/) that had some interesting facts.

"Midway through the 1998 football season, the list of college programs with the most active players in the NFL looked like this:
Notre Dame
Florida State
Colorado"

The decline began in earnest in the mid-2000s. They had a brief spell of success under Mike MacIntyre, and then sank to the bottom again.

[coachinwaiting]

Sustaining success has always been a hill too high to climb for Colorado. Late 80's to mid 90's was probably the best run in their history. I'm old enough to remember one of their better teams, save for the National Championship sharing team of 1990, when they finished 3rd behind fellow Big 8 foes Nebraska and Oklahoma in the 1971 final AP poll. Those were their only two losses in a 10-2 season as well.

[FayetteDore]

Did someone mistake this stadium thread with the separate Colorado thread?


Back to stadiums: I agree with VandyFanInKy and Charleston: there's nothing wrong with FirstBank Stadium that the Vandy United improvements won't fix (although I hate those cabana-looking boxes in the southwest corner that I've seen in the renderings; it looks asymmetrical and I like things symmetrical).

Also Johnmn555, you've set a new standard with beclowning. Nice!

[Johnmn555]

I can't believe Northwestern's trustees would go for this at that price. Didn't they just renovate Ryan?
Kind of like remodeling your kitchen when your house is bound to be a tear down. College football is in such a state of flux at the moment. Wouldn't you want to wait until the dust clears in five years before making this kind of commitment?

Moreover, the site is in the middle of a high density residential neighborhood, somewhat higher density than the overall VU area. No parking whatsoever. Neighbors will hate and cause problems over the construction and any non-football events they seek to attract. I would liken it to Forest Hills Tennis stadium in Queens, NYC (for those of you who go back a way).

Ryan Field was always better than the Dud.

[FayetteDore]

Duke has always been a very bad draw. UCLA doesn't attract many fans nowadays, but has some unique issues associated with attendance.

Speaking of UCLA, the LA Times did a piece just last week on the lack of an on-campus stadium and why there never will be one on that high-density, land-locked campus: https://www.latimes.com/sports/ucla/sto ... bowl-drake

And if you thought the 2-mile hike to a shared Nashville SC stadium would have been bad, one student talks in the article about the travails of a 26-mile trip, in LA traffic, from campus to the Rose Bowl to watch games: "Like many of his classmates, Phillipi has contemplated what it would be like not to make that 26.2-mile slog from Westwood to Pasadena, to revel in a short walk to games like other college football teams they watch with envy on television"