BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

If you're still in the Sun Belt after this all shakes out, you are really sucking hind tit.

 

Read a couple of different threads on a Memphis board and really wish I hadn’t. Just awful, destroy-your-faith-in-humanity stuff. Multiple people over there have decided the reason U of M didn’t get a Big 12 invite was because the school and city are too black. Mind you these aren’t black people saying this. It’s white folks lamenting that’s the reason (they think) other schools turned them down. And yet some of them want to “play the race card” because they think the “woke liberal media” will automatically side with them. Just disgusting shit and I kind of hate myself for even reading through it.

 

Maybe someone can dig up some bad social media posts or podcast comments from a few years back to get one of the invited four bounced.

 

Sounds like MT.org hasn't changed much.

I've seen some epic meltdowns there. Coach Cal leaving with the snow cone machine was hysterical.

 

It is a fantastic facility and it was much needed, conference expansion or not. Hughes was a dump and money pit and too far from campus to be worth it in any sense or even used for anything else. The new stadium is a center piece, it is used every single day and I don't know if there is anyone at CSU that doesn't think it was worth it, even if the Big Sky comes calling. From everything I've seen it has been successful financially. CSU is terrible in football and probably always will be, but the stadium is great.

 

Does anyone know why UCF was able to build an on-campus stadium and USF wasn’t? Similar institutional profiles.

 

Who uses the stadium every day? And how many of thoseusers need 40,000 seats. The soccer games draw a 1,000 people, maybe. I know it as touted as a way to bring more concerts and activities to Ft Collins but I don't think they have booked many. The reason is that if you can draw 40,000 in Fort Collins book whatever they call Mile High now and you will draw 75,000.

As for Hughes being a dump maybe. But Hughes opened in 1968. The stadium at Wyoming opened in 1950 and Air Force in 1962. Both those institutions seem to make their facilities work.

 

Decent read from 2019. I saw where USF did a feasibility study in 2017, but the $200-250 million pricetag was hard to swallow for the Brahmans, especially when you've got a NFL-caliber stadium for rent just down the road.

Why USF won't follow UCF's lead on a campus stadium (floridapolitics.com)

 

They are also both on campus, which makes a huge difference. If Hughes was on campus they probably don't build a new one. And Wyoming has done tons of renovations to make it barely viable where it is. Neither are even close to the quality of CSU's. Not close. Hughes was estimated to need more than $30 million in repairs just to make it keep working. It was literally falling apart the last seasons there. It made just as much financial sense to dump it (plus getting money for the land it is on).

You have to think beyond full football games that only happen five or six times a year. There are tons of offices, class rooms, an alumni center, a store, meeting spaces, event spaces. The thing is used on campus every single day. I have been to probably a dozen events there that weren't football games since it opened. I never went to anything extra at Hughes. As for other big events, who knows if they will happen, but there were agreements with the community to help make the stadium happen that limits them at least for now.

Again, great place. Used every day. Not a question it was worth it and necessary. The worst thing about it is CSU has done a terrible job of using it to get better. Facilities aren't the magic key in that regard, as they aren't to your point about moving up conferences, but it is valuable to that campus anyway. Don't think anyone is losing jobs or getting paycuts because of it.

 

Plus Orlando Stadium was a pit
Don’t know if it’s better since it was renovated and became Camping World Stafium

 

Very much like the Orange Bowl. The neighborhood has changed significantly around the Citrus Bowl (pardon, Camping World) since 1936, plus there's little parking. Having been there for an RV show, I can see why the Twins eventually pulled out of Tinker Field.

UCF thought they could do better on-campus. But now they need teams that draw to pay for it.

 

The Citrus Bowl was a revelation the year we went. It always looked cool on TV. In person it was like a tropical Legion Field.