You couldn't be sooooo wrong. I am not defending TAF. Far from it. You just don't understand that it took two off seasons to build the East Upper Deck. Any project of that magnitude takes more than one off season to build. It will take the same two off seasons to build the West Upper Deck. It won't be open for business until the 2005 season. So tell me that it wasn't finished on time again. Some people are sooooooo sensitive.
Yeah, what would I know about construction? I had no idea projects were done in seasons... Try learning to spell magnitude before you use it next time, junior.
Disclaimer: Anything spelled incorrectly in the following response is accidental and in no way meant to harm the intelligence of anyone reading. Please spare everyone else the spelling lessons. Rather than start a 20 month project during a football season (September to November), essentially working around two seasons worth of crowds, they start the project after a season of football (in this case 2003 season) to limit the amount of disruption to the fans (i.e. parking and pathways). They did the same thing after the 1998 football season in order to finish the EUD project for the 2000 season. The only disruption to the fans for the EUD construction was during the 1999 football season (this must be the season you saw cardboard people).
I don't think the south upper deck will ever be built. This was a special season. There have been many empty seats in the upper decks in most of the seasons since they were built. No way could LSU fill 120,000 seats in an average season. Folks just won't pay TAF surcharges to sit that high in the endzone. Not with all of the TV games available. The two decks are similar but don't match. West will have three club levels and East has only two. LSU plans to raise cash through surcharges, not more seats. Older parts of the stadium are deteriorating. We will see sections of the lower bowl replaced before another upper deck will ever be built. They could never sell enough seats to make an upper deck pay. But they are damn well going to have to take care of their sideline ticket holders soon with $400/seat surcharges.
My understanding is the design of the new upper deck will match the east upper deck in pitch so that if and when one of the ends is closed, it will flow around without a problem. That was one of the reasons set forth for doing this.
They should put "Welcome to Death Valley" on the field towards the sidelines on both sides. I have seen several other football fields with this, but the only one I can think of is Arizona's.
Red55, strangely enough, we agree... 125,000 people tailgate at LSU home games...yet only 90,000 make the games...This means that 35,000 people KNOWINGLY show up with the assumption that not only is there a game, but they will NOT ATTEND THAT GAME. You can't sell out each and every game as it stands now. The fact that we (LSU) put on sales that give discounted tickets ($10) to students, faculty, firemen, policemen, EMS techs, etc..., just goes to show that the demand for the tickets are just not what some here would like to think that they are. Look at Western Carolina in 2000. The first year that we had the new upper deck complete. The first game of the new millenium. The first game of the Nick Saban Era. The season home opener. What happened? We had to put on ticket specials to get only around 88,000 people into the stadium... Lambeau Field could expand to 125,000 and sell out every game. Foxborough Stadium could add 20,000 seats and sell out every game. Tiger Stadium can not, would not, and will not. The expansion of the stadium is complete for the forseeable future. The demand is not there for the tickets, and the cost relative to the lack of revenue that will be created by the additional seats which will not be purchased in a season ticket format will keep LSU from doing something that silly. Don't let our good fortune and our "P&G colored Ray-Bans" get in the way of objective thinking on this one... What recruits will want to see 10-20,000 empty seats for non-con games and/or Vandy/Moo U type of games? That's another angle that no one is thinking about, either.
We could always cover the empty seats with extremely large numbers of our immortal players similar to what USC has to do at the Coliseum.
