Rentschler Stadium expansion

[Nostical]

While certainly an upgrade over what we had, The Rent actually has several deficiencies, not the least of which are the standing areas in the end zone and the many standing alcoves between the decks. They were already termed a major blunder by the project manager who originally insisted on them (due to his missing a Dave Megget kickoff at Giants stadium while getting a hot dog--true story-- He asked the architects if they could design to have a lot of openings so fans can see the game while getting food and drinks!)The failure to have all our fans sitting on their fannies is what gives the impression of a less than filled stadium, even when it's essentially filled.

 

[Srqhusky]

Its a good stadium. Its hella better than the erector set ucf built. But the rent is nothing special. It has some good features like sound and sightline type stuff and the tg setup is great right now. I mean look at what baylor or tcu or uh are building. I like on campus stuff also...

Everyone I have been to has been erector setish, including the rent

 

[Chin Diesel]

While certainly an upgrade over what we had, The Rent actually has several deficiencies, not the least of which are the standing areas in the end zone and the many standing alcoves between the decks. They were already termed a major blunder by the project manager who originally insisted on them (due to his missing a Dave Megget kickoff at Giants stadium while getting a hot dog--true story-- He asked the architects if they could design to have a lot of openings so fans can see the game while getting food and drinks!)The failure to have all our fans sitting on their fannies is what gives the impression of a less than filled stadium, even when it's essentially filled.

I have to disagree about the standing areas. I love it at the Rent and I love it at baseball stadiums. No need to worry about people telling you to sit down, no need to worry about the size or width of the seat or the person sitting next to you.

Waquoit and several others have mentioned that the already built in for expansion areas are another level opposite the suites and press box and around and above the student section. I hope they keep the Rent in a horseshoe configuration and not a sombrero.

 

[Husky68]

If can get 40,ooo fans now, with the great tailgate opportunities with all the land, flexibility in offering pricing and ease of access to non "tailgating" fans - I could come up with a way to fill a 55,000 seat stadium. This is only 7 games over 3 months. Should have 12,000 students there.
Make it a better game day experience, allow overnight RV camping, let fans stay 'till 3 hours after game over. Do stuff.

 

[RS9999X]

7 games at $30 a ticket and 12,000 extra seats is $2.5 million. Then there's improving infrastructure costs to handle the new capacity.

I've got this whole diminihsing returns thing going on in my head absent a sound plan. RVs, legalize pot, and live music through the night after a Sat game. Why is this again? To earn another $360,000 gross per game minus the additional game day security and complaints.

The only way to sell that number of tickets for 7 games is building them into the student fees. Even soldout games today have plenty of cheap tickets on Stub Hub.

It's a recession. Demographic trends are getting worse. Sell out the 40,000, rasi eprices to a 40 minimumn ticket price and then talk to me about expansion.

There are 45 stadiums that sell more tickets than an expanded UConn would sell.30 fo them do 60,000 seats or more regularly At best UConn would become a Georgia Tech or similar in attendance. That;s if we forced tickets into the hands of the students.

At some point accept the Rent as a success and the CT market for what it is. We don't need a Miami situation where ticket dumping leads to general apathy and truly devalues the product.

 

[Waquoit]

The failure to have all our fans sitting on their fannies is what gives the impression of a less than filled stadium, even when it's essentially filled.

So what?

 

[Husky68]

The problem is that fixed costs for payroll, benefits, and debt service are climbing faster than inflation and productivity . As is Medicaid. I read somewhere that CT needs 5% more a year just to level fund everything in real dollar terms and that doesn't include pension and state employee health benefit arrears.

Then there's the Romney Recession when Mitt he cuts off much of CT's funding. By 2014 ........

Just think of the offsetting savings by not having to pay for Moochelles vacations.

 

[Nostical]

So what?

So what? I guess it's all about how UConn is perceived by the viewing public and the opinion makers. I dont think there's any question that empty seats send a poor message about support for the team and the program. During the opening of a televised game watch how our stadium looks compared to those of the big boys we're trying to become. It isn't close and it isn't pretty. Meanwhile there are lots of folks already inside The Rent that aren't showing up on TV because they're too busy standing in alcoves and under the scoreboard.

I'll also get on my soapbox again to whine about our pre-game crowd---although sadly, crowd is a poor choice of words. At schools where football is treated as a religion and tailgating is even more sacrosanct than here, the stadiums are jam packed during pre-game to watch the band take the field, hear the fight song and cheer the team running out of the tunnel. And in those other places where football is merely deemed "important", stadiums are still more than half-full with loyal fans roaring their support. Then there's us. Watch 20 seconds of this and you'll have your answer to "so '' what".

 

[Waquoit]

At schools where football is treated as a religion and tailgating is even more sacrosanct than here...

Football is not a religion and I am glad I don't live in a place where it is treated as such. I like living in a place where football is a part of life, not folks entire life. That's never going to happen here and I'm not going to worry about it.

 

[ConnHuskBask]

Football is not a religion and I am glad I don't live in a place where it is treated as such. I like living in a place where football is a part of life, not folks entire life. That's never going to happen here and I'm not going to worry about it.

Well to some of us, the notion that people would take a religion as seriously as I take my college football is equally as ridiculous.

The elitist attitude - because that's what it is - that us in the Northeast are so much more culturally refined and that's why we don't like college football as much is bogus too and pretty condescending. If some guy from Florida saw a drunken fight between some lunatic Yankees and Sox fans they may say the same about us.

 

[UConnDan97]

Well to some of us, the notion that people would take a religion as seriously as I take my college football is equally as ridiculous.

The elitist attitude - because that's what it is - that us in the Northeast are so much more culturally refined and that's why we don't like college football as much is bogus too and pretty condescending. If some guy from Florida saw a drunken fight between some lunatic Yankees and Sox fans they may say the same about us.

But the Yankee fan won the fight, right? Yeah, I'm clearly refined...

 

[ConnHuskBask]

But the Yankee fan won the fight, right? Yeah, I'm clearly refined...

Of course! Went to the game Sat with my Dad (Yankee fan too) and cousin (Met fan). Needless to say we were talking smack all weekend haha!

 

[ZooCougar]

Everyone I have been to has been erector setish, including the rent

That would make sense, if erector sets were made out of concrete.

 

[Waquoit]

The elitist attitude - because that's what it is - that us in the Northeast are so much more culturally refined and that's why we don't like college football as much is bogus too and pretty condescending.

I didn't say or imply that those in the Northeast don't like college football. That's not true, I haven't missed a game in over a decade. What I did say is that the Northeast as a whole will ever have the same depth of feeling for the game as they have in other parts of the country so why worry about it?

 

[Chin Diesel]

Football is not a religion and I am glad I don't live in a place where it is treated as such. I like living in a place where football is a part of life, not folks entire life. That's never going to happen here and I'm not going to worry about it.

Don't knock it til you've tried it. lol.

It is re-assuring to know that none of your family, friends or co-workers is silly enough to schedule anything of significance during the fall without first checking the football schedule. It makes weekends so easy. Unrequited love of college football down here may be the best thing to happen to relationships since the DVR and pausing of live TV.

 

[Waquoit]

The elitist attitude - because that's what it is - that us in the Northeast are so much more culturally refined and that's why we don't like college football as much is bogus too and pretty condescending.

But I will tell you what's truly condecending and elitist. It's condecending for one program to try to get another program to move a game to a neutral site solely because they think the stadium capacity is beneath them. And it's elitest when some self-proclaimed UConn fan is fine with the insult saying things like "People that want to take some stance about UConn plays at the Rent only - get off your high horse." Talk about big-timing your fellow fans.

 

[thatguyed]

and greatly increase buses from campus to bring in the kids. As a freshman, my daughter could only get to one game thanks to buses filling up and/or leaving campus way too early for kids who can't gate.

 

[EdgewoodNHV]

Watch 20 seconds of this and you'll have your answer to "so '' what".

And you think a clip from a pre-game marching band performance against an FCS opponent that was delayed twice for emergency reasons is an acceptable representation of our attendance problems?

 

[Waquoit]

So what? I guess it's all about how UConn is perceived by the viewing public and the opinion makers.

When I went to the UM game, more people left the game early than can fit into The Rent. Nobody cared.

 

[huskymedic]

When I went to the UM game, more people left the game early than can fit into The Rent. Nobody cared.

They don't care because they can then spread out more on the benches and be comfortable watching the rest of the game. Christ - we could double the Rent capacity if we used the Michigan seat "backside" measurements!

 

[ConnHuskBask]

But I will tell you what's truly condecending and elitist. It's condecending for one program to try to get another program to move a game to a neutral site solely because they think the stadium capacity is beneath them. And it's elitest when some self-proclaimed UConn fan is fine with the insult saying things like "People that want to take some stance about UConn plays at the Rent only - get off your high horse." Talk about big-timing your fellow fans.

It has nothing to do with The Rent's capacity. Michigan doesn't want to play out of conference road games besides ND. Michigan stands to make money buy buying out UConn for $2M and scheduling a home game with directional Michigan. It's that simple.

If you want to play Toledo, be my guest. I'd rather suck it up and play Michigan anywhere, because it's better for the program.

 

[Pudge]

We should be at 55,000.

Rutgers did it ... and put together the financing with paper clips & rubber bands. Tom Jurich at Louisville pushed it through with strong sponsorship. Hathaway made a bunch of big mistakes ... and this is one. And, don't tell me you can only do one Capital Improvement at a time; that's BS. Do the Practice Facility; the Hockey East improvement; and keep Football tops. All now.

 

[Carl Spackler]

In September 2013, we will +10 years since the first game was played at Rentschler. The stadium, should be able to seat full originially designed capacity by then - regardless of what our schedule is that year.

It could have, should have been done by now, but the ball was dropped, but there's still time. We'll see what comes of it.

 

[brasssbonanzaa]

In September 2013, we will +10 years since the first game was played at Rentschler. The stadium, should be able to seat full originially designed capacity by then - regardless of what our schedule is that year.

It could have, should have been done by now, but the ball was dropped, but there's still time. We'll see what comes of it.

The only ball that was dropped was by the fans who don't fill it up for every game. Until that happens, there is no reason to expand, and will make us look even worse. Having 15K empty seats per game in a larger stadium makes your program look bad on TV and in perception as opposed to having 100% capacity all the time in a smaller facility.

 

[Pudge]

The only ball that was dropped was by the fans who don't fill it up for every game. Until that happens, there is no reason to expand, and will make us look even worse. Having 15K empty seats per game in a larger stadium makes your program look bad on TV and in perception as opposed to having 100% capacity all the time in a smaller facility.

Wrong.

We are in a Arms Race. We made the investment to get to the highest levels of CFB; we simply need to keep that in focus. Capital Markets are a fluid thing ... we saw our peers move. Why do you think they did that? Were they also thinking about 15k empty seats? Perception? I think it was important to keep momentum with the UCONN football program ... and people just rationalized the opportunity away.

 

[FAIRTIDES]

The easiest way to guarantee 55K butts on most Saturdays is to be in a confernce where Penn St, Ohio St and Michigan will be playing every year against Uconn or Rutgers.

Uconn going to the B1G and being in a division that most likely would include most (or all) of PSU, Michigan, MSU, Ohio St, Purdue, Rutgers and Indiana is the easiest way to ensure 55K fans. All but Purdue and IU are probably easy sellouts.

Any other plan going forward is difficult for me to see adding up to 15K more fans than we regularly get now.

Right now, the only reason justifying expansion of 15K or 15K plus is a signed offer from another conference having expansion as a prerequisite.

 

[Carl Spackler]

Apparently, I wasn't clear enough.

So here goes again:

In September 2013, we will +10 years since the first game was played at Rentschler. The stadium, should be able to seat full originially designed capacity by then - regardless of what our schedule is that year... OR OUR CONFERENCE AFFILIATION in 2013.

It could have, should have been done by now, but the ball was dropped, but there's still time. We'll see what comes of it.

 

[BlueMAB]

Apparently, I wasn't clear enough.

So here goes again:

In September 2013, we will +10 years since the first game was played at Rentschler. The stadium, should be able to seat full originially designed capacity by then - regardless of what our schedule is that year... OR OUR CONFERENCE AFFILIATION in 2013.

It could have, should have been done by now, but the ball was dropped, but there's still time. We'll see what comes of it.

The caps don't make it any easier to understand, the first two sentences are simply incoherent.

I think we should expand the stadium, it will show the other conferences we are serious about our football upgrade, and are not going to let the fall of the Big East make our original investment a complete waste of money.

 

[brasssbonanzaa]

The caps don't make it any easier to understand, the first two sentences are simply incoherent.

I think we should expand the stadium, it will show the other conferences we are serious about our football upgrade, and are not going to let the fall of the Big East make our original investment a complete waste of money.

Sure worked for ECU.

 

[ConnHuskBask]

Stadium size won't me squat for getting into a conference.

UConn needs to win consistently and beat ranked / blue blood programs whenever we get the chance. No , right?

Those are the only things that are going to increase tv eyeballs for UConn games and ultimately that's the only thing that matters for conference expansion.

Not market. Not academics. Not stadium size. Not basketball. Not hockey. Not women's basketball.

TV eye-balls.

Win consistently and beat big names is the only way to improve our position which is why I'm beside myself that people would consider dropping a game with a likely ranked Michigan on ABC/ESPN team for Akron/Kent State/Directional Michigan on SNY/ESPN3.