Collegiate Stadiums

NCAA FBS College Football Stadiums, Attendance, Stats, History & Travel Blog

Daily Huddle 5-16-12

A collection of college football photos, stories and links from around the web.

New Michigan football t-shirt

Michigan unveiled a new football t-shirt for sale today that has a list of the program’s accomplishments heading into its 133rd season. Kind of reads like an old No Fear t-shirt from back in the day.

Former Purdue running back Reggie Pegram is headed to North Texas and may be eligible this season.

Pete Sonski (@29Sonski) provided this link with a short video of the USF athletic director Doug Woolard stating that an on-campus football stadium is in the long-term plans for the school.

Former Nebraska players Eric Crouch and Tommy Frazier handled their College Football Hall of Fame snubs with class. Makes he hope even more that Frazier finally gets in next year.

Aaron Torres (@Aaron_Torres) argues that USC’s athletic director Pat Haden is the best in the business.

While on the subject of USC, Heisman Pundit Chris Huston (@HeismanPundit) has an interesting take on how the sanctions actually helped USC become a top program again.

According to @SUonRivals, wide receiver Quinta Funderburk will transfer from Arkansas to Syracuse.

TCU has sold of of season football tickets for the first time in years. Just two years ago, they only sold 19,143 season tickets, than 22,500 last year and finally 30,000 this year. Amazing what a renovated stadium and a move to the Big XII has been worth to them already.

Notre Dame linebacker Carlo Calabrese couldn’t keep his mouth shut while Tommy Rees was being arrested a few weeks ago. Now he has been charged with intimidation of a police officer.

 

Stadium Update: Apogee Stadium

North Texas recently announced a 20 year, $20 million stadium naming rights deal for their brand new football stadium with Apogee, the nations largest provider of on-campus residential networks (ResNet) for higher education.

Below is a timeline of stories, pictures and videos that I have bookmarked throughout the building process.

A picture of Apogee Stadium from Mean Green Sports in June 2011

The first picture is from a nice gallery located here.

The same day Mean Green Sports released this picture of the stadium at night.

Night photo of Apogee Stadium

July 19th video from inside of the new Apogee Stadium.

A story and two videos showing the new stadium. Highlights from the article:

  • official capacity is 30,850
  • the stadium has 21 suites
  • Apogee Stadium cost $78 million to build

A link for the Good Morning Texas segment on the new stadium.

Below is a video showing the seating options of the new stadium.

A video about the new stadium from NBC DWF

The view of the field at Apogee Stadium from the press box

Finally, we will wrap up with a few official links:

All images courtesy MeanGreenSports.com

Multiple Stadiums Updates

Since I am trying to get caught up on everything I need to, I am going to make a large post here with little nuggets of stadium information. Normally this will go in either the daily links section or a separate post.

At Conference USA Media Day, Larry Porter said “Facilities don’t win championships, players do. But facilities do win players.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

First up is an older story on Colorado and how they are looking for a corporate sponsor for their stadium due to financial issues in the athletic department.

Stanford is adding AT&T WiFi to their stadium this year. It says you can connect to the WiFi with any device but I have a feeling it will be faster for AT&T devices.

Cal is renovating their stadium and are going as far as having seismic experts check over the plans.

This story is about Penn State adding WiFi and new scoreboards, among other things, to Beaver Stadium over the next three to four year, but it is a few wrong statements in it. For one, Beaver stadium will not be the only or even the first college stadium with AT&T WiFi, just check the Stanford story above. Two, they took seats away to make room for the 101 ADA seats, lowering seating capacity in Beaver stadium to 106,572.

Staying with Penn State, here is a study from their FieldTurf research building that shows the new FieldTurf Revolution is by far the best turf in terms of wear. The report is huge and will teach you more than you could ever imagine about synthetic turf. Ironically, Beaver Stadium is grass and Penn State has the best turf grass management program in the country.

The final item from Penn State is this picture of upgrades to Lasch Building, their football only complex.

Upgrades to Lasch Building

A photo of a trial version of the Kansas Touchdown Club

And here is a link for the full story on Kansas trying to build a club for big boosters. Note that season tickets in the club are coming down as the team continues to be bad after their magical BCS run. 

Here’s a good story behind how Boone Pickens decided to donate $165 million to Oklahoma State athletics.

Oklahoma State is adding a huge flag poll to Boone Pickens Stadium

I’ve linked this story before, but to me it just outlines how desperate some schools are to try and keep up in the money race of BCS and FBS football. Washington is begging you for money and will let you sponsor or name just about any park of their stadium.

A nice video of the scoreboard update at Arizona.

Vanderbilt replaced their grass field this summer for the first time since 1999!Photo of the grass being laid at Dudley Field

Story to go with the Vanderbilt picture, or if you want a video, try this link.

The new "vintage" scoreboard that has been added to the Rose Bowl

Picture of workers installing seats in the UNC Blue Zone

UNC added the Blue Zone, which cost ticket holders a large donation per seat, then they fired Butch Davis, which might lead to a lawsuit as I linked earlier today. At least it looks good in this picture. The picture below is of the scoreboard going on top of the blue zone seats. Here is another take on the scandal and renovation.

Scoreboard on top of the Blue Zone seats

Part of a two year process at Nebraska to expand Memorial Stadium

Nebraska also has a time lapse video of the construction. And a link for the construction details, explaining the completion date of fall of 2013 and capacity of approximately 92,000 fans.

The newest official photo from Kansas State of Bill Snyder Family Stadium

I’m assuming the picture is to show off the new AstroTurf GameDay 3D360 grass for which they sent out this video

 Skip Holtz wants USF to build an on-campus stadium. This story outlines why on-campus stadiums help, which is probably what sparked the Holtz quotes.

I’m not sure what was so great about this except Washington State was excited to see the sun out at Martin Stadium, so they sent this picture.

OMG, sun in Washington!

 OK, in all seriousness, Washington State does have a cool program, just like a few other schools such as Army and North Texas where they have movie nights in their stadiums during the summer. I think it is a great way to bring out fans and to use the stadium in a non-traditional way, especially with drive-in theaters dying off so quickly.

Georgia added an HD scoreboard to Sanford Stadium

Michigan will now allow you to say “I do” at Michigan Stadium for the right price. Thankfully they added lights and a scoreboard this summer to enhance the experience.

A photo of the new scoreboard at Michigan Stadium

A photo of the TCU Stadium construction

This is just a general story about planned facility upgrades at South Carolina. 

A photo of the field at Bobby Dodd Stadium

 LSU provided this picture of the window upgrade project. And a full gallery of photos here.

Photo of the LSU window project

Also, LSU has raised the capacity of their stadium to 92,542 seats this year according to a trivia contest they ran on twitter. 

The Chick-fil-A kickoff game wants you to have this info if you are attending the game.

Baseball playoffs might make the Cal-USC game move according to ESPN. Remember that Cal is renovating their stadium so they are playing in AT& T Park this year.

Davis Wade Stadium is getting ribbon boards. Hard to see in this picture but you get the idea.

Here is a rendering of planned upgrades and a full story.

A nice rendering of planned upgrades to Davis Wade StadiumUSC Coliseum is getting a new scoreboard

Lost Letterman ranked his 10 worst stadiums. Sorry, I can only rank places I have been which I will do at a later date

Here is a look at the value of home field advantage and features a heavy dose of Penn State.

Corn Nation is afraid that booing will return to Memorial Stadium at Nebraska this fall.

Rutgers wants everyone to know that they are enhancing game day festivities. Pretty much a fluff piece but worth the read if you are a VIP ticket holder.

Wisconsin has been informed that Soldier Field will have new turf installed in time for the Northern Illinois game according to Brett Bielema.

Boise State may not be able to remove the track in Bronco Stadium due to state board inaction.

Cincinnati has changed up the tailgating areas. Here is the full story.

 

Two-A-Days: Team #110 – North Texas

Quick Thoughts: North Texas is another team with a new stadium, but they lack the talent to win more than a few games in my opinion.

How others rank North Texas

Publication Rank
Phil Steele 111
Athlon Sports 109

My “sure-to-be-wrong” game score predictions

Date Team Predicted Score
Thu, Sep 1 @ Florida International L 24-34
Sat, Sep 10 Houston L 48-31
Sat, Sep 17 @ Alabama L 13-45
Sat, Sep 24 Indiana L 45-34
Sat, Oct 1 @ Tulsa L 34-45
Sat, Oct 8 Florida Atlantic L 28-27
Sat, Oct 15 @ Louisiana-Lafayette W 35-31
Sat, Oct 22 Louisiana-Monroe L 35-34
Sat, Oct 29 @ Arkansas State L 27-35
Sat, Nov 12 @ Troy L 24-38
Sat, Nov 19 Western Kentucky W 33-35
Sat, Dec 3 Middle Tennessee L 41-34

Predicted Record: 2-10

As always, feel free to toss in your opinion on why I am wrong.

Stadium Update: North Texas and Mean Green Stadium

North Texas probably has the biggest stadium project of the off-season with their new Mean Green Stadium, only really rivaled by the huge project going on at TCU’s Amon G. Carter Stadium. It appears that the project is getting close to being finished, as the University was sending out a few actual pictures taken from inside the stadium yesterday.

View from the coaches booth at the new Mean Green Stadium

View of the seats at the new Mean Green Stadium

View of the new Mean Green Stadium at night

A render of the original design for Mean Green Stadium

If you look close enough at the render and the first actual photo, you will notice that the scoreboard placement was moved from on top of the odd shaped end zone seating to the open corner area, more at field level.

It will be a few years till I get to do the Texas portion of my stadium tour, but I am actually excited to see the new home of North Texas football.

Photos via Mean Green Sports (@MeanGreenSports). If you would like to see all of the rendered photos, click here.