Auburn and Oklahoma are about 1,100 and 2,500 seats away from us in terms of capacity. If they are serious about reducing seats, we could be NINTH in the SEC in terms of capacity when the dust settles. SWAC won't be far behind us either.
A lot of big $$ boosters don't like NIL. And it's hard to argue if you look at it logically. Who really wants to give their hard earned money to a high school kid who may or may not be a player, may or may not be a good kid/hard worker, may or may not represent UF well, may or may not even stay at UF. Kamari Wilson will be picking up his Dec NIL check.....how would you feel if your were showing up to work every day and your NIL donations were going in his pocket? On the other hand, your donation can go to a tangible and lasting facility. A stadium you can see/visit and will be there long after you are gone. It's not hard to understand how some view this.
I certainly have a hard time wrapping my head around it. I know that. I don’t have millions laying around, but I’m not sure I wouldn’t have a hard time justifying this shit even if I did.
Cars, sports equipment, clothes… all endorsed by certain athletes but that’s not what’s happening here. Entire teams are getting paid and nobody really knows theses kids except a select few.
And some can take some joy in knowing he pays our star player to be there. Maybe not that much different than Jerry jones and his ego . Self gratification?
Some schools (like Tamu) have a lot of those guys. We don't seem to be one of them. I'm ok with it. I don't give to the NIL and never will, so I won't complain about losing players when we get outbid.
And I know it’s sacrilege to even suggest but with that amount of money you’re almost halfway to a brand new stadium. Hell, make a replica that’s modern.
I don't believe for one moment that we have to reduce seating to make these upgrades. We sell out all non cupcake games as it is... And I cannot believe we weren't grandfathered in to the codes right now. IOW, if there is not immediate safety concerns I doubt that we have do any upgrades with regard to reduced seating capacity. With these "upgrades" we should be making our stadium bigger not smaller. I also hope that none of these ""upgrades" have anything to do with external forces like accommodating the the NFL... the Jaguars.
Sellouts don’t equate to butts in seats. We are grandfathered in to codes, but when you start doing renovations, things have to be brought current. What has to be brought current depends on what all you’re doing. I don’t know how we’d go bigger in the current footprint. We’d have to tear down and rebuild or build elsewhere.
Interesting wrt “accommodating” the NFL, there might be a tie-in on some level especially the timing. I too agree that there should of been real discussion about how to bring affordable options for people wanting to establish routines of in person attendance at the games beyond the existing upper deck in the NEZ I just dont get the math for reducing the seating by 10-18k most of it premium areas and being able to maintain the same or greater revenue without ringing the stadium with suites at street level for a major increase revenue. You are definitely not going to make this work with the visiting team allotment, most of which is in the SE corner up high. The row of visitors behind the team will also be reduced by the reno.
Only the concession sales people care about the few hundred fans that can't make it to the game. Maybe we should create a better way to re-sell the tickets from the people that can't make the games?
TN, Bama, LSU, and TA&M all were bowled but increased capacity in the last 20 years. Heck TA&M went full on crazy and tore down much of their old stadium and rebuilt. Of those I think only UT reduced capacity slightly in the last 10 years or so. Of course they were and still are the largest stadium in the SEC.
Michigan & UT were above 100K since at least the 70’s. PSU, OSU, A&M and Bama all top 100K now as well, but UMich and UT are still the biggest.
