No point in having the highest capacity stadium in the nation if you can't fill it up. The stadium looked horrible during the Western Illinois game when we had only 87,000. We were at 99.32% capacity for the year. That is ranked @ #21 in the nation. Until we can start having capacity consitantly over 100% than we do not need to expand to 100,000 and we surely do not need to try to expand to be the largest in the nation.
If I could afford a luxury box you would hear a hell of a lot of noise from my box. I drove past Tiger Stadium on Nicholson today and I saw and head a pile driver working so they are laying the foundation for something but I didn't see any demolition work going on on the West Side upper deck.
Well the problem with that is we are playing a team like Western Illinois, a D-II school. Who wants to pay to see us kill them? We need to do like other big time programs and bring in better competition.
I hear the plan is to work this year on building the new superstructure in front of the existing ramps. Only the upper seating deck and the press box will be demolished and that will take place immediately after the 2004 season. The new deck is supposed to be ready for the 2005 season. In this fashion, upper deck ticket holders will not have to be moved in 2004. The pile drivers are working in the old parking lot where the new structure will go up.
True, but we all know that LSU is trying to upgrade the OOC schedule and had some bad luck with teams backing out ... Bowling Green, Marshall, VT. We have Arizona State in 2005 and Arizona in 2006. Hopefully, VT keeps their word and comes in 2007. When plans were announced for the new east upper deck, many people said we wouldn't fill up Tiger Stadium ... we did. I expect the same will be true with any future expansions. If we build it, they will come ... as long as we keep winning! LOL
I think when the ticket increases go into effect we will get a real gauge of how much we are going to fill Tiger Stadium on a consistant basis. Teams like Ohio State and Michigan can put 100,000 people in the seats every week, are their fans more committed than Tiger fans?
Michigan has a 10,000-name waiting list for season tickets in a 107,000-seat stadium. LSU has season tickets available in a 91,000 seat stadium. It's not a matter of fan committment, its about the number of butts LSU can place in the seats. Michigan and Ohio have populations over twice Louisiana's size. U of M and Ohio State also have much larger enrollments than does LSU.
What are talking about with the haven't accomplished anything stuff? I damn well know what we accomplished but if you think that because we won the SEC and a NC that people will fill a stadium with over a 100,000 seats to play anybody than you are wrong, especially 4 or 5 years down the road. I feel for certain that if we play games against teams of that stature we will not fill up that many seats. It has nothing to do with winning 2 SEC and 1 NC.:shock: If we add on to the stadium we had better upgrade the schedule.
Fact is people will pay good money to see the good teams that come to Tiger Stadium. They won't pay $45 to see ULL or Arkansas State. If you play teams like USC and Oklahoma you can charge basically any price per ticket and sell them out with many more people waiting to get tickets. When they say we have over 100,000 on campus on gameday they mean for game like Auburn and Georgia, not The Citadel and ULL.
