And the Bears suck.I assume that any reduction in capacity will be a short-term move and that there would be a plan in place for a 2nd phase extension if we had a string of sellouts over a few years and our season ticket base reached the point where a return up to 47-50k makes sense.
That really seems like the best approach for improving gameday atmosphere: reducing capacity to 42-43k until there's enough purple demand to justify an expansion.
You could accomplish that in any number of ways, for example planning the endzone in such a way that it could be expanded in a 2nd phase.
Keeping capacity higher doesn't serve the program well until we're consistently drawing crowds in the 40k range against non-conference opponents. We'll only be able to do that when we have a string of years where we're consistently ranked and challenge for the division title and NY6 bowls (multiple 10+ win seasons where there's no losses until the late weeks of the season).