Sorry, I'm late to the party, but this thread (and post) was too good to pass up.
henfan wrote:Because no one was kicking them out of University of Richmond (now, City) Stadium. Yes, the place was not beautiful and needed updating, was not close to campus, but moving was not a necessity. There was plenty of parking, plenty of capacity to accomodate higher demand games (especially with ODU coming on) and easy access in and out. The old stadium was not hurting UR's ability to recruit top notch players.
Actually, the city commissioned a study to see what better uses for the land could be, considering they have ~10 acres or so bringing in $1 a year. What would you have us do, wait until they demolish City before we began building? Also, recruiting visits never included a trip to the stadium. The new stadium will allow for more game-day visits, which will only allow us to increase recruiting.
henfan wrote:I've yet to hear the plan to update the capacity of their field beyond 9K. Even with the tiny digs, they are already going to have trouble parking people on or near the campus, nevermind moving the traffic on the campus roads on gameday. The FB crowd is not the same as the hoops crowd. Much to the neighbors' chagrin, the FB ticket holders are not likely to park for two and a half hours and promptly leave.
It was built with expansion in mind, that's all that needs to be said. Yes, parking is going to be a bear, but there have been plans on the table for quite some time to add a parking deck on the biggest lot on campus. An increase of 5,000 seats would require ~1,650 new spaces. Roads are currently being improved to handle the increased volume, and a comprehensive traffic plan has been put into place. It will probably take a while to become as efficient as it should be, but the lessons learned now will only help when we expand.
This paragraph also shows your limited knowledge regarding traffic surrounding sporting events. Traffic for basketball games is much worse, even though it's a smaller crowd. The crowd arrives within a one hour window before the game, travels with fewer people per car, and leaves all at the same time. Football crowds come with more people per car, over a much larger time frame before the game (four hours) and a longer time after the game.
henfan wrote:IMO, UR made this move with something very specific in mind and it probably doesn't include CAA FB over the long haul.
Odds are you have never met our President who is a HUGE athletic proponent. He'll tell you the football team's record since he took over (35-7) as he did with me a couple of weeks ago, when meeting on a completely different subject. UR isn't leaving the CAA unless we're forced out via conference shakeup or our conference mates.
henfan wrote:The school that initially hesitated and was the last to join the CAA when they took over control of the FB league, appears to be moving in a direction opposite other schools in the conference.
Do you realize that we had an anti-athletic President when this took place, not the one we have now?
Perhaps the recent trend of the visiting team winning the game will be joyfully changed this Nov. 6th, when the Barneys go limping back to Harrisonburg after being injected with massive amounts of UR Spider venum!! While you're at it, you can leave your JMU Marching Dorks back in Harrisonburg to greet the limping Dukes when they return to their dog house, I mean campus, the night of November 6th! Your Marching Dorks are not welcomed on the UR campus. I think it was great that the stadium lights were turned off on them at the old stadium a couple of years back! Oh I just love hating JMU!
