For the guys with arena envy....

[Medill90]

(and it just seems to be guys)

In the seventies and the eighties (that's last century for those of you in the Illinois militia) a lot of baseball teams "went big" and threw up stadiums with high volume seating capacity, domes and all that crap.

They were monstrosities, coffins that made baseball suck again. Houston, Atlanta, Seattle, Montreal, etc., etc.

And then, one day, a little ten year-old boy with a weathered baseball glove was overheard by a marketing director to say, "this experience sucks."

And so there was a rush to downsize and build baseball parks that parroted features of Wrigley and Fenway. Even the White Sox, who had torn down Comiskey and built a modern stadium, rejiggered their building by taking out seats and changing design features to make it more quaint.

The seat count argument in other threads has introduced a new level of stupidity to this board. Either the the new arena will be great, or it'll suck (it'll be great). And either it will provide a competitive advantage to the Cats, or it won't (it'll provide a huge advantage a la Cameron Indoor).

The new arena is going to be a palace. Stop trying to find a dark corner in every bright room.

 

[chitownUofI05]

Illinois militia? I like it! Not that we have to go back to last century to find evidence of us dominating this series or anything.

 

[scru]

Illinois militia? I like it! Not that we have to go back to last century to find evidence of us dominating this series or anything.

Burn!

 

[FeliSilvestris]

The seat count argument in other threads has introduced a new level of stupidity to this board. Either the the new arena will be great, or it'll suck (it'll be great). And either it will provide a competitive advantage to the Cats, or it won't (it'll provide a huge advantage a la Cameron Indoor).

You may have misunderstood the arguments. Yes, there is the seat count issue. NU has sold out the 8000+ arena multiple times this season and gotten over the 7000 mark many more times. If the program continues its upward trend one can see how attendance could naturally reach or approach the 10,000 mark (it is pretty close already) at least for the bigger games.
BUT THERE IS ANOTHER ISSUE: reno vs new construction. The cost of renovating the 64-y.o. facility is extremely close to the cost of a brand new state of the art facility of comparable size (7,000). See the thread comparing DP's and NU's arenas and use simple math to play with various capacities.