Level-Headed Analysis - Stadium

[CONN78SEJ]

A stadium could be built on Campus. Most likely behind Mansfield Supply. A big issue to me is parking for tailgating for 30,000 people. Fans are not going to want to tailgate in parking garages. Depending on stadium location open areas to park could be a good walk, uphill! And with students on campus their parking lots are already very full.

Should be easy to research how other schools with on campus facilities manage that. FSU, UCLA, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Harvard are huge tailgating schools, and there are many more.

 

[Duncan Idaho]

I'm not sure how much wiggle room you believe exists between the terms full and sold out but my first interpretation (when you initially posted) was that you were claiming all games in Memorial for a stretch ~40-45 years ago had 15k-16 people in the seats (and on the hill). I'm not sure if I would view attendance of 12k in Memorial as being full, but even if it would qualify as full, I'm very confident that you can count on one hand the number of games that had 12k or more during the time frame in question.



There were some games where 4,000 would have been a pretty generous assessment and sadly, 25% capacity (which 4k would be) pretty much qualifies as empty.

I understand how obsessed you are with our having an on campus stadium. I personally would love that myself but for us to have an on campus stadium that would be sufficient for what we want our football program to be is a bridge too far at the moment due to many reasons, the most important being that we will need success for a sustained period of time to rebuild the dedication of our fan base (hell, I just responded on the men's hoops board about the incessant complaining about the cupcake home games).

We will need patience (and sadly, as I'm pretty confident that you are in your early 60's as I am, it may take until we are both too old to appreciate it) for the things to fall into place before there would be sufficient movement among people in the fan base, the state and the state's government to want something like an on campus football stadium.

Over 20 with >12k, Villanova alone was a big draw here but your point stands. its still not a good look.

 

[CL82]

I'm not sure how much wiggle room you believe exists between the terms full and sold out but my first interpretation (when you initially posted) was that you were claiming all games in Memorial for a stretch ~40-45 years ago had 15k-16 people in the seats (and on the hill). I'm not sure if I would view attendance of 12k in Memorial as being full, but even if it would qualify as full, I'm very confident that you can count on one hand the number of games that had 12k or more during the time frame in question.



There were some games where 4,000 would have been a pretty generous assessment and sadly, 25% capacity (which 4k would be) pretty much qualifies as empty.

I understand how obsessed you are with our having an on campus stadium. I personally would love that myself but for us to have an on campus stadium that would be sufficient for what we want our football program to be is a bridge too far at the moment due to many reasons, the most important being that we will need success for a sustained period of time to rebuild the dedication of our fan base (hell, I just responded on the men's hoops board about the incessant complaining about the cupcake home games).

We will need patience (and sadly, as I'm pretty confident that you are in your early 60's as I am, it may take until we are both too old to appreciate it) for the things to fall into place before there would be sufficient movement among people in the fan base, the state and the state's government to want something like an on campus football stadium.

Lol, obsessed? I wouldn't say obsessed, but no doubt I do challenge the onslaught of mythology that opponents to an on-campus stadium throw out. let's run through them:

There's no room on campus! Actually, there are three spots on campus that immediately come to mind, in the athletic campus behind Toscano; off of Discovery Drive or on Horsebarn Hill, and the fourth just off campus on the Depot campus. My personal preference is in the athletic campus, because that would allow stadium parking to be used as overflow parking for basketball, baseball, soccer, and hockey. Penn State in particular has its sports venues in a single area on campus. It works really well. Discovery Drive has some appeal as it has a nominally better access to roadways, but, I think at the end of the game if you run both lanes on Hillside Avenue and Discovery Drive outbound you minimize the difference. Which brings us to the second big objection....

I went to a basketball game one time at Gampel and it took me a long time to leave. There is no way we could ever get 40,000 people in and out of an on-campus stadium. I know you've read my thoughts on this, but let me share them again. I think we could handle this the same way the vast majority of college campuses do all across America, six weekends in a year. The first and most obvious solution is that 40,000 people aren't all driving up in the same incident. The kids on campus are going to be driving at all, they will just walk over. As for everyone else, tailgating allows people to feather the time that they're entering and leaving the stadium mitigating traffic problems. If you arrive early to set up your tailgate, and hang out a little bit and avoid the lemmings heading out of the stadium with 10 minutes to go in the game, traffic is virtually nonexistent. To the extent that there is traffic that can be mitigated by smart traffic management. Ideas like making hilltop Avenue and Discovery Drive one way would help a lot, as would traffic officers managing the chokepoints. I don't think that the University of Connecticut is the only university in the nation that can't handle this, but maybe I'm wrong.

The People's Republic of Mansfield will not allow the University to build an outhouse on campus, never mind the stadium. It's true that Nimbyism runs wild in Mansfield. But it's my understanding that for sites like the one proposed in the athletic campus, there are no approvals needed from any Mansfield land-use board. When we built the hockey rink we also did an environmental impact statement which showed that there is no impediment to building the stadium at that location. That's another reason why I like building in the athletic campus.

The State of Connecticut will immediately defund the university if we don't play our football games in East Hartford. Yeah, sorry, I'm just not buying this and, in fact, I believe it would be political suicide for politician to actually articulate this position.

Everyone in Fairfield County will stop attending games and will immediately stop donating to the University. I mean I guess that's possible. In my experience Fairfield County fans tend to be pretty good ones. I don't think an extra half hour six times a year will change that. I do think night games like tonight would be more problematic and less you take a half day and maybe start the long weekend a little early.

To me, at least, all the objections to an on-campus stadium are contrived in the real underlying objection is it would be nominally more inconvenient six times a year. I get that, and I'm sympathetic to it, but it doesn't seem like a good reason not to have an on-campus stadium like the vast majority of colleges do all across America.

My biggest objection to the Rent is the ridiculous payment plan that we have with the state. And having the state pay the university to pay the athletic department to pay the CDRA's, a quasi-state run agency only serves to hide the incredible miss management of that agency. Have they ever run anything, anywhere, at any time for a profit? Even with the University of Connecticut as a captive tenant paying above market lease rates to use their facilities and subsidizing a portion of their losses in addition to that, the CDR a still loses multi millions of dollars every year. Hiding 7.5 million of it, as per Dave Benedict, in the athletic departments budget needlessly makes the athletic department look like it is in worse financial straits than it actually is. This impacts our conference realignment chances negatively for no other reason than to hide the efficiency of a state run quasi private agency. That rankles me.

Anyway, I plead guilty to a little bit of hyperbole regarding the old Memorial Stadium days. But that wasn't born of my "on campus stadium zealously" so much as halcyon memories.

 

[billybud]

Many large stadiums are building down to offer a few thousand fewer seats while improving gameday experience with club seating, clubs with bars, etc. etc.

Connecticut may be different because of compact size...but in states where fans commute 4+ hours each way ot more, it is an overnight for each home game,

Pay high prices for tickets (including the required booster contribution)..a mandatory two night minimum at inflated prices that the hotels require....and it is a huge yearly expense compared to the home big screen.

It has been all about giving more bang for the customer...