oh wow that was from a minute ago. I think the same comment is still true though, anyone trying to justify a direct revenue business case for a big expansion is blowing smoke. The investment would have to be justified on indirect benefits, which aren’t necessarily without value. I think since writing that, the industry has shifted to have higher expectations from F&B, merch and non-traditional seating options.

The rendering is close to NM State’s stadium (also an Aggie Stadium)

1. Shade—whether canopies, trees, covered concourses, etc. FBS kickoffs time influenced by TV aren’t always good for fans, example late-August 1pm.
2. Acoustic engineering—is there anything practical that can boost the crowd noise like what the Seahawks did.
3. Keep one grass berm for families but I would suggest Aggie Pack back to an end zone. At Toomey it made the coin toss more interesting because a visiting team didn’t want to be going north in the 4th quarter.
4. Cabana section. At my local stadium they made a section with seat backs and its own bar, snack stand, and restrooms not accessible to other sections. Priced a little higher than a reserved seat but less than the donor level seats. Very popular with the 28-40 crowd.
5. Improved foodservice. Trend is toward people wanting more meal options beyond snacks. A lot goes into this but especially if there are going to be private suites an onsite commissary kitchen needs to be part of it. Cannot maintain quality at this volume trying to hotbox it in from the Silo or Segundo.

welcomed by patrons I think yes, if it had the square footage to be viable group watch space and a menu that could sustain itself over the summer. I think now more than ever mobile order takeout/uber eats has to be part of a business plan. The Grad found a way to be a lot of things to a lot of people. But I think there will be headwinds. Specifically, I think the city is known to be difficult about liquor licenses and noise. And a friend who had a shop told me a couple landlords have a near monopoly on downtown real estate. Do you have experience building and owning restaurants?

when the stadium opened it did have speakers in the bathrooms with the KHTK radio broadcast. So if it doesn’t anymore it’s either broken or forgotten.

when Aggie Stadium was built 2005-2007, construction costs were ballooning due to housing bubble, unprecedented building in China, and rebuilding the southeast after Hurricane Katrina. Also had high diesel and electricity prices which further drove concrete, steel, and earthmoving costs. The state budget was insolvent, which increased bond borrowing costs. Add in it was an unusually wet winter during earthmoving phase and the general contractor had no experience with stadium projects or the UCD building department. The contractor alleged the university struggled to make timely decisions, which may be true. But with nowhere to turn for more money, they probably had to go through multiple rounds of value engineering as costs escalated. And every time you redesign to save money, it costs design dollars plus time, which costs general conditions and inflation dollars. So unless you have intentionally placed items in a project that are easy to fall out, it can cost you $3 to try to save $1, so you actually need to find $4 of savings. Had the stadium project been a couple years earlier or later we might have have gotten a better deal, but hindsight 20/20.

seriously, they are trying to do pizza from the concessions stands? That is a difficult stadium food to execute well. It’s usually cold, slow, or both. The stadium has 32 points of sale (about 330 seats per POS). Pro venues with high quality diverse offerings are like 80-100 seats per POS. To overcome that deficit they should be focused on a limited menu that can be prepared on site at high speed.

hope you can get your electrical issue resolved. Initially I only had enough power to run 2 out of 3 between car charger, hot tub, and laundry. Somehow it was the laundry not getting done. I added a 50amp charging circuit and it’s great, but is important to use USA-made industrial components.

I bussed it from Davis to Conway, Arkansas, straight thru. It was not good and that was charter with 50 people I knew. I checked, this trip is possible on Greyhound with 5 transfers in 53 hours. Says book now only 2 seats left. I think you’d get less than 5 hrs of sleep.

The die have been cast. For better or worse, Davis has a potential pathway to FBS. Sac is looking for one. Should any of that come to fruition, what does this mean for Poly football? If they don’t also mount an effort, does its stock improve with a near-monopoly on California FCS or does it get out-resourced and fall apart completely?

starting to see some R1S in my area. Haven’t seen an R1T in the wild but looks more useful than the Cybertuck. My first exposure to Rivian was the Long Way Up miniseries on AppleTV with Ewan McGregor.

I want an FCS natty before we get too far in front of ourselves. If we moved up it would likely be a long time before we were relevant in the national FBS post-season scene.

That said, I do expect to an effort to expand/enhance Aggie Stadium. Probably a quiet fundraising period first, which may already be happening. I think politically it will need to seek funding alternatives other than just mortgaging more student fees on. But perhaps the tortoise beats the hare, we may well see action at Aggie Stadium before Hornet Stadium. SAC12 promised that was a shovel ready project this year. Twenty days left… haven’t heard of any shovels, or even any requests for proposal.

Strangely, I struggle to have a strong opinion about Rocko. To be fair, I don’t know to what extent the performance center and practice field were his gigs or whether Blue and Hawkins had put those in motion. We have thankfully free of Title IX scandals and funding shortfalls, which is important. And maybe he just has a behind the scenes personality, but publicly don’t see a lot of inspirational drive from athletics admin. It is unfortunate that Kevin Blue left because he was so accessible and good at fixing things quickly. Maybe he was planning to leave anyway, but if the baseball hit job courtesy of The Bee and The Aggie contributed, it is too bad.

A lot of schools are calling this position “football general manager” and giving it an executive pay boost from director of personnel. What I don’t know is if this is generally the HC’s hire or reports to the AD. Or who’s head rolls if the W/L column goes south for a particular team due to transfer portal.

agreed, that while there have been some differences of opinion here on certain topics, this is a place with folks worth talking to. It’s actually a bit jarring to stop by other forums and see some of the most degenerate corners of the internet in broad daylight.

I get a few dozen college interns every semester and my intern coordinator does these little info sessions about how to understand today’s younglings. I normally dismiss these kind meetings as HR huggy nonsense. The themes they presented were shortened attention span, an expectation management will get involved with issues of hurt feelings/mental health, and that they struggle to develop peer leadership and navigate ambiguous situations. They instead want very explicit direction. I know a lot of that sounds like old man speak but idk maybe there is something to the fact that pandemic effects are still reverberating. It might actually be hard to find students with peer leadership skills. I’m certainly not seeing it with my interns.

before 2016 AST was on Yuku (now Tapatalk). The platform was always breaking and sometimes had ads. I found it, it is still out there frozen in time! There was an older board out there too, might have been under D2football boards. But yes, this has been a good platform and no special app required.

I don’t really understand how they gave up on things that had been working. The tracking may have been rudimentary then, but think of the targeted marketing that would be possible today.

While I don’t disagree that a person or people are making way too much to deliver way too little, here are some ideas for next year—
1. Have the option to opt in to purchase potential playoff tickets at time of season ticket sales, or at least make it a one-click transaction.
2. Host a freshmen-centered tailgate, since they generally don’t have their own cars. If it can’t be free, have it accept the dining hall plan instead of just cash.
3. Bring back Aggie Fanatics / Aggie Bucks. Aggie Fanatics was a program in the late 90s where you got a membership card and scanned it at every game to get giveaways and earn Aggie Bucks, which could be redeemed for swag. Incentivized going to more games, even some of the obscure sports if you were trying to earn.
4. Meet townies where they are. Promote in local elementary schools and at the Farmers Market. Woodstock’s Pizza used to say they were the home of the “5th quarter huddle” and you’d see plenty of players there after the game. I remember walking from Toomey to the Hallmark (then Ramada) Inn that G Street would hopping after a win.
5. Low cost/no cost advertising. Examples- change the default no content projector image in the lecture from the UC logo to a game this Saturday splash screen between classes, insert a message on the Unitrans bus destination boards, put table tent cards in the coffee house and dining halls.

They almost had me… Florida nonstop to Sioux Falls for $80 on Allegiant but only flys on like Thursdays and Mondays and I don’t think I can swing the extra days in Sourh Dakota.

my understanding is that student tickets were sponsored so the tickets were free to interested students. I don’t know how it was operationalized though.