you can fit more butts per square foot on bleachers than grass. I think they assume each grass end zone holds about 1000. Each bleacher section has an average of 400-450 seats. You could fit maybe 5 sections each end? So net gain of a couple thousand? Given how popular the grass berms are and that they wouldn’t be great seats, I don’t know if the juice is worth the squeeze. Unless maybe there was a desire to move the students to an end zone. The north end zone at the Toom I think had a bigger impact on the game than students at the 50. I wonder if there is a market for on-field cabanas. I have seen some schools starting to bring premium seating onto the field to fill in dead space around end zones to bring the crowd noise closer.

Agreed on all points, just trying to maximize seats while minimizing cost. I don’t have a problem moving the students to the end zone especially with my time at Toomey but I imagine there would be some uproar about what was communicated/promised back ahead of construction.

I like the grass. I think it adds character. Without it our stadium wouldn’t feel unique at all.

I did a little googling to find what the top NILs were. These are estimates, but a see similar numbers from various articles. Top schools like Texas paid out something like $20M, do the Sac12 would be able to jump to big boy table!

Of course, no one knows what NIL collectives will look like when the revenue sharing kicks in. Power 5 conferences can pay up to $22M - presumably most of that domes from donors redirecting their NIL ‘pledges’. Group of 5 limit is much lower.