Well, if you are doing the long troll, you've done it well enough for me to buy in. First, I don't know why people talk about this. We have Rentschler field in East Hartford as our home stadium. I suspect if all the decision-makers got a Mulligan on that we probably wouldn't do it again, but it is what it is and it's not changing in the near term. And what it is actually pretty nice. It's got great sight lines and great tailgating. It just happens to be 30 minutes too far west.
People complaining that it's too far for them to drive an extra half hour six times a year for a football game, but somehow it's not too far for students to drive that half hour six times a year always strikes me as incredibly ironic. Students are tomorrow's fan base. We should do everything we can to suck them in while we have them for four years. I think it's fairly indisputable that putting a stadium on campus maximizes the chance that you'll make fans of current students far more than having them having to get tickets for a bus two days before the game queue up and wait for the bus, drive a half hour and get dropped off in the middle of an airfield. The East Hartford Stadium is very much a reactionary result of not being able to seal the deal and bring the patriots to Hartford. It never made any sense.
The other thing that fascinates me is how people promote a mythology that if we actually build a stadium in Storrs, Connecticut, It will somehow trigger Armageddon. Yet, virtually every other college in America manages to do it without building a super highway to the front gate. That is the whole reason behind tailgating. You feather your traffic coming in and you feather your leaving. It would be pretty easy to do that without any major infrastructure changes in Storrs.
You mentioned Rutgers. I've been to many games there. The only time I've waited in line is weeknight night games because that's pretty much the only time that everyone is exiting at the same time. Even then, traffic moved pretty smoothly. Rutgers dedicates two-lane roads temporarily in one direction to empty the stadium. It works pretty efficiently. Similarly, I've been to a lot of games at Westpoint and have never waited even a minute to get out because I either have tailgate options, or I just walk around campus a little bit, tour, them monuments, etc. It's all the lemmings that are rushing out at the end of the third quarter that get stuck in traffic. That works for me.
But again, doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to talk about this as often as we do. The next time there will be a decision point will be whenever it is necessary to dump in significant money into the Rent. Say, nine figures. At that point it makes sense to consider whether it is a better use to apply that money to building an on-campus stadium. Until then, why bother?
