EWU To Move Ahead With Second Phase of Roos Field Renovations

[eaglesfootball]

I don’t understand why anyone would complain about any upgrades to the stadium at this point. 20 years of empty promises should be enough to get excited about the new press box. The stands won’t be filled anyway until we have a new coaching staff.

I'm glad it's happening, and you're right about the coaching staff. But consider that ten years ago we averaged over 10,000 per game in a stadium that effectively holds only about 9k. The issues I have is that most of the new improvements don't address capacity. They're all basically aesthetic improvements and things like amenities and luxurious club seating which don't do anything to improve the overall capacity of Roos Field.

If these improvements do anything to get us back to being a top program in the conference like we all hope they will, we're sort of right back to where we were 10 years ago having to erect temporary bleachers in the south end zone to accommodate larger games. The reasons given for stone-walling on new seats has always been "well we don't fill the stadium now," but we already know that's not true when we're a winning program. Eastern could have fixed this problem so many different times when we were still a top program nationally but their lack of realistic approaches is part of the reason we failed to capitalize on that success.

We could have done modest improvements like putting up a grand stand on the east side of the stadium which would have improved the look of the stadium immensely and helped recruiting instead of spending several years chasing the pie-in-the-sky Gateway Project which relied on state-funds to get done which was never going to happen even as a multi-purpose facility.

 

[Hambone]

I'm glad it's happening, and you're right about the coaching staff. But consider that ten years ago we averaged over 10,000 per game in a stadium that effectively holds only about 9k. The issues I have is that most of the new improvements don't address capacity. They're all basically aesthetic improvements and things like amenities and luxurious club seating which don't do anything to improve the overall capacity of Roos Field.

If these improvements do anything to get us back to being a top program in the conference like we all hope they will, we're sort of right back to where we were 10 years ago having to erect temporary bleachers in the south end zone to accommodate larger games. The reasons given for stone-walling on new seats has always been "well we don't fill the stadium now," but we already know that's not true when we're a winning program. Eastern could have fixed this problem so many different times when we were still a top program nationally but their lack of realistic approaches is part of the reason we failed to capitalize on that success.

We could have done modest improvements like putting up a grand stand on the east side of the stadium which would have improved the look of the stadium immensely and helped recruiting instead of spending several years chasing the pie-in-the-sky Gateway Project which relied on state-funds to get done which was never going to happen even as a multi-purpose facility.

Truer words have never been spoken. We could have easily done something like Utah Tech. Looks at theirs, which has a capacity of around 12,500 which would have put us right where we need to be with room for future growth.

Greater Zion Stadium | Utah Tech University

utahtech.edu

 

[EWURanger]

Moved over from the game thread.