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Post by brandon on Apr 5, 2019 15:42:35 GMT -6
A lot has changed in a decade. But with growing excitement, I'm afraid we will be out more money building it smaller than it needs to be. We have a big fans base, they just dont care nothing about coming to see D2 schools anymore, hell, they wasnt showing up for VSU or DSU. The only D2 school they would show up for was UWA. I'm telling you, you build it smaller that 15k ro start, there is going to be a lot of pissed off folks when we play A&M or JSU and probably UT Chattanooga in the new stadium. Not to mention a program that dont sick like the ones I mention. I couldn’t agree more Brandon, how could we go smaller than 15K? I think if we go less than 20K we are making a mistake.. I’m just going to pick 2 schools that would be a sellout or very close at 20K and that’s A&M and JSU!! If we want to succeed we have to go somewhere between 20-30K, I could see future opponents coming to Florence like Alabama State, South Alabama, Troy, UAB and Middle Tennessee, if you build it they will come and if you don’t we will never get home games against teams like that and it will set us back. We will never get UAB, Troy, South Alabama or any other FBS school to come to Florence. But the fact remains, just from it being on campus, being a new stadium, and having people excited about having schools more related to UNA ar home, will bring bigger crowds. Let's be honest, how many of you would show up to see Shorter? North Greenville? Mississippi College? Western Oregon? Central Washington? Now how many of you will want to see us play Montana, JSU, A&M, KSU, Sam Houston State, even Stetson at home? In D2, Shorter should have been the lowest attendance. DSU and VSU should have been the highest. In D1, A school like Shorter, or even Murray State should be the lowest, and that should be higher than in D2. 15k is the minimum.
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Post by unalions on Apr 5, 2019 15:49:14 GMT -6
From the drawings, it made me wonder if 15-20K could even fit there beside Flowers. I guess they could go up in the horseshoe and on the opposite side with an "upper deck" situation.
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Post by Lion2001 on Apr 5, 2019 15:52:23 GMT -6
It looks nice... And I love having it on campus... but nearly NO room to expand. If you zoom in on the picture, you can see the dotted lines on the visitor side in the end zone where it says future expansion and lists the number of seats for expansion.... and there is only enough room to expand the total stadium size to 15,510. That is Braly plus 1k. This seems incredibly short-sighted or pessimistic. I thought expanding meant having room to grow into something awesome in the future if we were able to get there. Not room to “grow” into Braly deluxe. The picture on the ECM site is the same way.
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Post by unafied on Apr 5, 2019 16:13:47 GMT -6
From the drawings, it made me wonder if 15-20K could even fit there beside Flowers. I guess they could go up in the horseshoe and on the opposite side with an "upper deck" situation. I’ve worried about having enough room, too. As for an upper deck, if the design shown is eventually used, that looks like a permanent press box/luxury suite structure on the home side. I’m guessing no room for an upper deck there for sure. Hate to be a pessimist, but I worry they want to drive up demand - and prices - with a smaller capacity.
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Post by unalions on Apr 5, 2019 18:00:15 GMT -6
From the drawings, it made me wonder if 15-20K could even fit there beside Flowers. I guess they could go up in the horseshoe and on the opposite side with an "upper deck" situation. I’ve worried about having enough room, too. As for an upper deck, if the design shown is eventually used, that looks like a permanent press box/luxury suite structure on the home side. I’m guessing no room for an upper deck there for sure. Hate to be a pessimist, but I worry they want to drive up demand - and prices - with a smaller capacity. The only upside I could see to that is potentially improving the atmosphere in the more intimate setting. Might work, might not. I remain cautiously optimistic that voices are being heard and the project will move forward to be a great success. (Fingers crossed)
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Post by brandon on Apr 5, 2019 18:15:47 GMT -6
Even more reason to just go with 15+ to start with.
The only reason to go more would be if we went to FBS someday.
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Post by Lion2001 on Apr 5, 2019 18:26:39 GMT -6
I’ve worried about having enough room, too. As for an upper deck, if the design shown is eventually used, that looks like a permanent press box/luxury suite structure on the home side. I’m guessing no room for an upper deck there for sure. Hate to be a pessimist, but I worry they want to drive up demand - and prices - with a smaller capacity. The only upside I could see to that is potentially improving the atmosphere in the more intimate setting. Might work, might not. I remain cautiously optimistic that voices are being heard and the project will move forward to be a great success. (Fingers crossed) Oh it’s definitely a permanent press box. They NEED to build the home side BIG since that will always stay the same. Make the rest small with room to add upper decks to be even with the existing home side one day. This is not the way forward unless they don’t want to grow into anything more than we are right now. This is an opportunity to dream big and ha e something that will work for the next 50 years, or just sink money into something that is the bare minimum for now.
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Post by brandon on Apr 5, 2019 19:20:44 GMT -6
It looks nice... And I love having it on campus... but nearly NO room to expand. If you zoom in on the picture, you can see the dotted lines on the visitor side in the end zone where it says future expansion and lists the number of seats for expansion.... and there is only enough room to expand the total stadium size to 15,510. That is Braly plus 1k. This seems incredibly short-sighted or pessimistic. I thought expanding meant having room to grow into something awesome in the future if we were able to get there. Not room to “grow” into Braly deluxe. The picture on the ECM site is the same way. There is not any difference in a footprint of 12k than 15k. You are just looking at adding a few rows of seating around the stadium. Braly is 14+k without the horseshoe design. And an upper deck would add minimum to the footprint because it would be overlapping the practice field with no obstructions. If that same design started at 15k, 25k expansion would be a piece of cake.
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Post by Lion2001 on Apr 5, 2019 19:36:48 GMT -6
It looks nice... And I love having it on campus... but nearly NO room to expand. If you zoom in on the picture, you can see the dotted lines on the visitor side in the end zone where it says future expansion and lists the number of seats for expansion.... and there is only enough room to expand the total stadium size to 15,510. That is Braly plus 1k. This seems incredibly short-sighted or pessimistic. I thought expanding meant having room to grow into something awesome in the future if we were able to get there. Not room to “grow” into Braly deluxe. The picture on the ECM site is the same way. There is not any difference in a footprint of 12k than 15k. You are just looking at adding a few rows of seating around the stadium. Braly is 14+k without the horseshoe design. And an upper deck would add minimum to the footprint because it would be overlapping the practice field with no obstructions. If that same design started at 15k, 25k expansion would be a piece of cake. You’re agreeing with me right? Could t tell.
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Post by roaringsince96 on Apr 5, 2019 20:24:28 GMT -6
Stadium size may be due to college football having an overall reduction of attendance? College football attendance last year had a reduction of 22%. 15,000 would be a very nice size. If we get attendance back to 10,000 per game with occasional high of 12,500 to 13,500 we would be ahead of a lot of FCS schools. Even though we are playing FCS competition,the ticket prices and appeal for the average fan will not exist against a Campbell or Kennesaw State. Most fans are not familiar with those teams. Why? Those schools shirts aren’t in every Walmart and gas station in the state. ESPN gameday doesn’t talk about the lower conference games. Unless you went to school at UNA, and even then, a lot of times the SEC schools are the rave. We need to keep scheduling all games at night until weather will affect temps with cold. Hope the in state schools play on CBS at 2:30 or earlier. I think we finish the stadium the year we end probation and it will be great thing for attendance and overall enthusiasm....plus Saban has likely retired to car dealership by then.
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Post by Lion2001 on Apr 5, 2019 22:03:05 GMT -6
So D1 FBS schools have stadiums 50,000 - 100,000. Im not saying let’s do that.... However... shouldn’t we leave room to grow into an eventual 30,000ish range down the road? Don’t we want to be an upper-tier FCS program eventually? I’m not saying build it now, but why not have the possibility of it? Besides... that home side needs to be close to as tall as Braly so I can continue to get wide-angle videos of the band. :-)
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Post by unafied on Apr 6, 2019 5:24:36 GMT -6
So D1 FBS schools have stadiums 50,000 - 100,000. Im not saying let’s do that.... However... shouldn’t we leave room to grow into an eventual 30,000ish range down the road? Don’t we want to be an upper-tier FCS program eventually? I’m not saying build it now, but why not have the possibility of it? Besides... that home side needs to be close to as tall as Braly so I can continue to get wide-angle videos of the band. :-) We should absolutely plan to eventually get to 30k, IMO. Even if it never happens, build something that could expand to that number. Who knows what college football will look like in two or three decades. Maybe attendance will continue to drop. But what if it doesn’t? What if in 20+ years we are at a point where moving to FBS makes sense? A 12k seat stadium would automatically disqualify us under the current rules. It seems unrealistic now to picture that scenario, but did anybody see Troy doing what they have done in 1990? I doubt it. Obviously I don’t know all the details from back then, but you could argue that shortsightedness caused us to miss the boat on moving to D1 in the mid-90s when Troy and JSU did. I don’t want a repeat of that. I understand that this isn’t a rich state, and we aren’t a rich university. But I would rather wait 6-8 years if that’s what it takes to get funding to properly do this stadium, than to rush something in 3-4 years that doesn’t allow us to grow.
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Post by Lion2001 on Apr 6, 2019 6:11:29 GMT -6
So D1 FBS schools have stadiums 50,000 - 100,000. Im not saying let’s do that.... However... shouldn’t we leave room to grow into an eventual 30,000ish range down the road? Don’t we want to be an upper-tier FCS program eventually? I’m not saying build it now, but why not have the possibility of it? Besides... that home side needs to be close to as tall as Braly so I can continue to get wide-angle videos of the band. :-) We should absolutely plan to eventually get to 30k, IMO. Even if it never happens, build something that could expand to that number. Who knows what college football will look like in two or three decades. Maybe attendance will continue to drop. But what if it doesn’t? What if in 20+ years we are at a point where moving to FBS makes sense? A 12k seat stadium would automatically disqualify us under the current rules. It seems unrealistic now to picture that scenario, but did anybody see Troy doing what they have done in 1990? I doubt it. Obviously I don’t know all the details from back then, but you could argue that shortsightedness caused us to miss the boat on moving to D1 in the mid-90s when Troy and JSU did. I don’t want a repeat of that. I understand that this isn’t a rich state, and we aren’t a rich university. But I would rather wait 6-8 years if that’s what it takes to get funding to properly do this stadium, than to rush something in 3-4 years that doesn’t allow us to grow. Exactly. 100% agree. Maybe the Andersons could kick in a few Mil to make it what it should be out of the gate? I’m ok with Anderson stadium. Or The TNT bowl. Lol
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Post by brandon on Apr 6, 2019 7:47:49 GMT -6
There is not any difference in a footprint of 12k than 15k. You are just looking at adding a few rows of seating around the stadium. Braly is 14+k without the horseshoe design. And an upper deck would add minimum to the footprint because it would be overlapping the practice field with no obstructions. If that same design started at 15k, 25k expansion would be a piece of cake. You’re agreeing with me right? Could t tell. I dont know, I just think upwards expansions on the stadium would be easy, and definitely be able to go more than just over 15k. Just an upper deck in the endzone area could hold 3-5k if they did it right. Then from there an upper deck on the opposite side of the press boxes and VIP areas would stretch from one endzone to the other, and even have more room for box seats on that side between the lower and upper sections. I would say you could get an additional 8-10k or more on that level. All it would do is overhang over the practice field, and that's not a big deal. In fact, the players may enjoy that on hot sunny days.
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Post by brandon on Apr 6, 2019 7:49:49 GMT -6
We should absolutely plan to eventually get to 30k, IMO. Even if it never happens, build something that could expand to that number. Who knows what college football will look like in two or three decades. Maybe attendance will continue to drop. But what if it doesn’t? What if in 20+ years we are at a point where moving to FBS makes sense? A 12k seat stadium would automatically disqualify us under the current rules. It seems unrealistic now to picture that scenario, but did anybody see Troy doing what they have done in 1990? I doubt it. Obviously I don’t know all the details from back then, but you could argue that shortsightedness caused us to miss the boat on moving to D1 in the mid-90s when Troy and JSU did. I don’t want a repeat of that. I understand that this isn’t a rich state, and we aren’t a rich university. But I would rather wait 6-8 years if that’s what it takes to get funding to properly do this stadium, than to rush something in 3-4 years that doesn’t allow us to grow. Exactly. 100% agree. Maybe the Andersons could kick in a few Mil to make it what it should be out of the gate? I’m ok with Anderson stadium. Or The TNT bowl. Lol I'm sure the Anderson's will have money in it. But I would still like Bobby's name on it.
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