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.

 

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.

 

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.

Giving Love to Purple Stadiums and a Few Others

Last week the big news was Michigan AD Dave Brandon giving a quote on WTKA that he would like to expand Michigan Stadium to 119,000 or 120,000 seats. I’m sure he really meant 120,001 since they always leave 1 seat for Fielding Yost.

Here is what Brandon said:

“We have a vision for what can be, as it relates to if our waiting list for tickets gets large enough, and we’re in a position where we feel that it’s affordable,” Brandon said. “Because if we put additional seating in Michigan Stadium, we have to fill it immediately, which gives us the ability to pay for the cost of the addition.

“One of the things that I’ve said publicly I’d love to do, at some point, is close in at least one of the ends, and that’s all part of the master plan for growth. The south end of the stadium would be the place that we would start, and if we were to take the bleacher system up to the top of the scoreboards, which would be even with the elevation of the East and the West towers, create a concourse that would afford fans the ability to get from one side to the other, both indoors and outdoors, both in the concourse and additional bleacher capacity.

“It would take the total capacity up close to 119,000, maybe even 120,000. I would love to do that, at some point under my watch. That would be great fun, but we have a lot of work to do to get there, and we’ll have to be sure we’ve got the kind of fan support we have to make it happen.”

This certainly would be interesting and I wonder if some day the stadium will actually reach the size that Yost originally envisioned, 150,000 seats.

Of course, when you don’t have a tradition to fall back on you can always go the Boise State route and build a colored field to draw attention to your program. This is what Central Arkansas did when designed and released this on April fools day:

Central Arkansas Vision

Central Arkansas Vision

Yesterday, @LoganKersey graced us with two pictures showing that the University was making their vision reality.

Central Arkansas Field

Central Arkansas Field Installation - via Logan Kersey

 

Central Arkansas Field

Central Arkansas Field Installation - via Logan Kersey

Then again, you could take a stadium with tradition and work in some purple during a huge remodel and come up with something like this, like TCU is doing to Amon G. Carter Stadium.

Amon G. Carter Stadium Vision

Amon G. Carter Stadium Vision

And an actual look at construction, which isn’t slated to be finished till the 2012 season, leaving entire sections unusable during the 2011 season according to this presentation by TCU.

Amon G. Carter Stadium April 2011

Amon G. Carter Stadium April 2011

Finally, we bring you a picture from Iowa State from the 1938 home game against Oklahoma. Iowa State has been doing a great job lately with their social media accounts (@CycloneFB), releasing some real old pictures of sporting events.

Clyde Williams Stadium 1938

Clyde Williams Stadium 1938 - via @CyloneFB