FIU Fanatic

Regards to Mean Green fans. The rendering is that of Phase I of the stadium construction. The reason the "design" looks odd is because it won't be finished until phase II is built. It keeps the "old" North Side bleacher right where it is right now, which is far away from the field, due to the track being there. The rest of the stadium will be new stands closer to the field, once the track is removed. Now, Phase II will enclose the stadium close to the field, becoming a bowl, and include a 6-8 story building attached to the new North Side of the Stadium. The North side will then become the Main Stadium Facade and include a 100,000 square feet student support center. This center will include Admissions, undergraduate advising, financial aid, and welcome center. Additionally, new.improved locker rooms, new coaches' offices, weight room expansion, and meeting rooms will be added. Hope this info helps a bit.

"When I finally got over to him I kneeled down to Mr. Bostic there and told him to pick his head up, that he had nothing to be ashamed of and that they left it all on the field and did their university proud by fighting as hard as they did. People forget that the Golden Panthers are only in their 5th season, ever in which they have now lost 5 of their 6 games by a total of 14 points. " Thanks for your kind words, FF Rick. I'm sure our players really appreciate those type of words at the moment, even if they didn't react accordingly at the time. I sure appreciate your kind words, as it shows true sportsmanship, and human nature. Both teams (especially defense units) left it all over there, and someone had to win, and to lose. Congrats on your win, and again, thanks for your kind words to our players.....

Heard the majority comes from student fees, season ticket allocations, and donations.....other than that, I don't know real specifics in terms of state dollars. They also plan on using leverage from some guaranteed money games for repayment, as I heard, since we balance the budget without guarantee monies..

Regards to Mean Green fans. Let me offer my thougths for some proper perspective, I think. As you live in South Florida, you must know that, currently, the only DI football program south of Gainesville that has an on-campus "thing" to play in, is in FIU. So, while crappy as it is now, it was always intended to be a transitional stadium, until plans, and funding became available for our real thing. We've only been playing football for 4 years, this being our 5th, and to have a state-of-the-art 20 thousand seats (I heard it's closer to 25k) in the program's 7th season...you are right, it is just Huge for our program. I would even say that perhaps even for the great majority of programs in the nation in their 5th year of existence, to have that new stadium and program's growth would be acceptable at least. We are happy and hope it is as nice as we've hoped. At the point FIU's development is, I agree it would be better to have a smaller stadium, with very nice amenities, than just a large stadium, that would look, and feel, so empty with our current fan base.

" I'm just fired up about being able to see FIU 9 times!! " Regards to all Mean Green fans....It is actually 10 times that FIU games will be broadcasted. As you could imagine, we are thrilled!!

You are right about the quality of the stadium. However, you have to put in perspective it was always meant to be a temporary stadium for a IAA program until we could become IA. Fate made FIU join IA ranks only after two years of the program's existence. Remember FIU always had the choice of playing either at the Orange Bowl (we are playing there next year) or Dolphins Stadium.....From what I've heard the new "Cage" will be a very, very nice cozy stadium...Hopefully, when you come back in 2007, you will see a very nice FIU Stadium, not the Orange Bowl....

Pretty funny stuff You know, I bet the ones that have the most fun of this stuff are the players that visit these type of boards.....Anyways, good luck, and if any of you are going to Miami, I hope you do have a lot of fun in our town (Not too much though).