New Proposed Unt Football Stadium

NT91 · June 7, 2008

A 45,000 seat stadium that looks like an erector set cost UCF $55 million. It's expandable to 60,000 but the damn thing is brand new and it sways and bounces. I don't want a stadium like that.
SMU's 32,000 seat stadium is expandable to 45,000. It looks nice, solid brick facade, and cost $42 million in 2000, so figure conservatively that it would cost $55 million today. That's what we should be shooting for.

And we will!

GoMeanGreen1999 · June 7, 2008

Correction. Back at the start of December of '07 we had $6 Million pledged.
Where it is now who knows?
Rick

So I guess my question now is this - putting my "we should build bigger than 30k aside for minute" - why are we not going ahead and starting the new stadium with the supposed 6 million that we have?

KingDL1 · June 7, 2008

So I guess my question now is this - putting my "we should build bigger than 30k aside for minute" - why are we not going ahead and starting the new stadium with the supposed 6 million that we have?

There can be plenty of reasons from they don't have a finished plan, to who knows what the final price tag is. Maybe the School or the board wants more then 10% down. Maybe they are waiting for a couple big donors. Maybe the pledges have strings like when you have 10 million pledged. Maybe they are slow, or maybe they are looking at different plans for different sizes. Maybe they are waiting for something to play out, like an event or a corporate sponsor to help them with the Hotel/Stadium project. OR maybe they fudged the numbers a little, to make themselves look better.

UNTflyer · June 7, 2008

So I guess my question now is this - putting my "we should build bigger than 30k aside for minute" - why are we not going ahead and starting the new stadium with the supposed 6 million that we have?

I think we will have an answer to that soon. Fromwhat I have heard, all signs poiinted to this project taking off sometime during the next school year.

gangrene · June 7, 2008

So I guess my question now is this - putting my "we should build bigger than 30k aside for minute" - why are we not going ahead and starting the new stadium with the supposed 6 million that we have?

That's my question too. I repeat, I am not opposed to a larger stadium with the exception that the higher cost will delay construction further. Personally, I'm very tired of all the talk and no action and am growing leery that anything will be built in the next few years.

KingDL1 · June 7, 2008

I think we will have an answer to that soon. Fromwhat I have heard, all signs poiinted to this project taking off sometime during the next school year.

They really need to get started by the 1^st quarter 09 to even have a shot at the 010 season, I still think that is the goal. Or at least everything I have heard up to now leads me to think that.

GoMeanGreen1999 · June 7, 2008

That's my question too. I repeat, I am not opposed to a larger stadium with the exception that the higher cost will delay construction further. Personally, I'm very tired of all the talk and no action and am growing leery that anything will be built in the next few years.

I am very concerned because so little is really coming out about when the project is going to get started. Right now, all it is, is a "I am hearing this or I am hearing that." Nothing as far as the media has even mentioned it, which leads me to believe that this it the earliest the first of Jan of 09.

UNT_playmaker · June 7, 2008

What pisses me off the most is that we had this in our plans since 2000 and even started talk about a new stadium in the 70s. We are at 2008 and havent broken ground or basically seen a model and the costs seem to go up, up, up each month.

With the way the dollar is going, gas prices, and construction cost, pretty soon we might not be able to afford a new stadium.

UNT_playmaker · June 7, 2008

Oh, I don't know about that, but I would agree we are definitely in the bottom 20.
Stadiums worse than Fouts:
1. Kibbie Dome.
With a capacity of 16,000, it is the smallest "stadium" in Div-IA. It's appropriate that it is located in Moscow, ID, because it looks like an old Russian nuclear storage facility.
Indoors, it doesn't get much better. It looks like a cross between an ambitious high school gym and an indoor soccer field.
The rest of my Bottom 5:
2. Lockhart Stadium (FAU)
3. Peden Stadium (Ohio)
4. Scheumann Stadium (Ball State)
5. University at Buffalo Stadium (Buffalo)

Fouts is by far the worst football stadium alot of us have ever entered, the distance from the stands to the field, the horid distance from the endzone seats to the field, and everything else...

Makes it by far the worst of the worst. It should be used by high schools to as an example of what not to do in constructing a high school stadium.

Denton ISD, was so fed up that they went and built there own stadium in 2 years and said goodbye Fouts, all the while our own football program still uses the same facility. Even 2a and 3a teams dont bother to use it anymore for their area playoff games.

Edited June 7, 2008 by UNT_playmaker

KingDL1 · June 7, 2008

What pisses me off the most is that we had this in our plans since 2000 and even started talk about a new stadium in the 70s. We are at 2008 and havent broken ground or basically seen a model and the costs seem to go up, up, up each month.
With the way the dollar is going, gas prices, and construction cost, pretty soon we might not be able to afford a new stadium.

Keep in ming they had preliminary plans, not full sets that get expensive. Wiring, pluming, lighting and others are added to make a full set when a final design is decided on, that is when it starts getting serious.

UNT_playmaker · June 7, 2008

Piss Poor Management from the start.....

NOTHING in regards to the project went well from the start. They lost the student election by a few votes, they lost and alienated donors by not telling people what was going on.

The whole Stadium issue was very widely publicized and showed the students what they were voting for, but now nothing is being said and told to people to support this and get behind it...

The failures that have resulted are as a result of their mismanagement, planning, and execution.

We might need a direction to probably get this off the ground, I hate to say this but our best hope might be if RV goes somewhere else and we get a guy in here who can get it done the right way.

I don't think RV is going anywhere anytime soon... <_<

MeanGreenEagle · June 7, 2008

We should all go to Denton and just start diggin a hole next to the AC and build this thing ourselves with any spare wood and steal we can find.

UNTLifer · June 9, 2008

Denton ISD, was so fed up that they went and built there own stadium in 2 years and said goodbye Fouts, all the while our own football program still uses the same facility. Even 2a and 3a teams dont bother to use it anymore for their area playoff games.

Denton ISD built Collins because of the growth of the school district and the need to replace Bronco Field on Fulton Street. Denton High rarely played at Fouts and neither did Ryan High School.

GoMeanGreen1999 · June 9, 2008

Denton ISD built Collins because of the growth of the school district and the need to replace Bronco Field on Fulton Street. Denton High rarely played at Fouts and neither did Ryan High School.

Not sure when it stopped, but when I was in high school at Denton High, we played all of our home games at Fouts from 1990 - 1992. I believe once they went to 2 high schools in Denton, and the attendence dropped so much for each game, then they renovated Bronco field to play games there, but seems like I remember at least for the first year or two, that High and Ryan both played every other week or so at Fouts.

UNT_playmaker · June 10, 2008

Actually I went to Denton-Ryan my freshman year than moved to Denton High because Denton-Ryan was operated like a prison, but the series between these two teams in football was moved to Fouts for a few years in the early 2000's but moved after DISD built the new 14,000 seat stadium. Also Denton-Ryan and Ennis played in Fouts as well as Denton-Ryan playing other high profile teams at the time as well as local area playoff action.

Alot of the people who watch the Denton vs. Ryan games as well as the Ennis game said that Fouts was a horrible venue even for high school football games and other schools saw this as well and stopped using Fouts and now use the new DISD stadium for high school football playoff action.

What is so great about a new stadium is we can generate alot of money from high school playoff games, concerts, and other sporting events to our university. There is so much potential in alot of different areas to compensate for this great investment

Edited June 10, 2008 by UNT_playmaker

UNTflyer · June 10, 2008

Hopefully with a new stadium we can get that Denton rivalry back on the UNT campus.

GoMeanGreen1999 · June 10, 2008

Hopefully with a new stadium we can get that Denton rivalry back on the UNT campus.

Extremely doubtful. DISD didn't build a state of the art, 15 million dollar stadium, to then move the Denton High, Denton Ryan game to the new UNT stadium.

KingDL1 · June 10, 2008

Extremely doubtful. DISD didn't build a state of the art, 15 million dollar stadium, to then move the Denton High, Denton Ryan game to the new UNT stadium.

No, but you would see several high school playoff and championship games played in our new stadium.

Green Mean · June 10, 2008

I would also like this stadium to be thought of beyond football. Hell I think they have a chance to make more money from the stadium thats non football related than football related if they are smart.

GoMeanGreen1999 · June 10, 2008

No, but you would see several high school playoff and championship games played in our new stadium.

Oh I agree. With Texas Stadium going to be torn down, and the new Cowboys stadium going to be probably more than the UIL wants to pay at least in the first 10 years, our new stadium at 45k would be a nice central fit for many late round playoff games and championship games.

gangrene · June 10, 2008

Oh I agree. With Texas Stadium going to be torn down, and the new Cowboys stadium going to be probably more than the UIL wants to pay at least in the first 10 years, our new stadium at 45k would be a nice central fit for many late round playoff games and championship games.

I wonder if we could work out an exclusivity contract with Southlake Carroll to play all their playoff games in our new stadium??