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"NEW" Ryan Field

The first hearing between one of the important Evanston Committee’s and NU has been put off now until March or April. The February 22nd meeting was postponed by NU. They say they’re getting their ducks in order.

It’s Super Bowl Sunday and to date zero permits have been approved by the City of Evanston for demolition and/or construction of Ryan Field.

This is a brand new progressive city council in which many new players took office during the lockdown. They’re too busy fighting with residents over topless sunbathing, fair housing, bag taxes, and other nonsense they try to drum up
 
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Anyone know home many tickets the Big Ten requires the home team set aside for the visiting team’s fans?
 
So I want to make sure I understand: we’re assuming that there’s a seat license fee. We’re assuming the price is going to go way up. And we assume the team is going to be bad …forever. Do I have that right? Or just speculating worst-case scenario?

As long as we’re making stuff up, I’m going to imagine myself sitting in a beautiful stadium, in a comfortable seat, paying a little bit more money to watch a scrappy team that goes to five straight bowl games and two Big 10 championship games in three years.
 
So I want to make sure I understand: we’re assuming that there’s a seat license fee. We’re assuming the price is going to go way up. And we assume the team is going to be bad …forever. Do I have that right? Or just speculating worst-case scenario?

As long as we’re making stuff up, I’m going to imagine myself sitting in a beautiful stadium, in a comfortable seat, paying a little bit more money to watch a scrappy team that goes to five straight bowl games and two Big 10 championship games in three years.

God bless you Darren.
 
About the opposing fans thing - I love it when opposing fans come in and rock the stadium along with ours. The two most exciting games I have seen NU play (not in person) were the famous Michigan vs NU game and the win over OSU. Full House, 50k, sure a ton of OSU fans, but the place was rockin! I'm worried that a 30,000 stadium will be too filled with older fans and too polite. I prefer a sense that tear gas could need to be deployed at any minute to keep the fans separated. I am afraid we will have 10-15,000 senior citizens there (out of 30,000) and it will be known as "the smallest and most quiet and boring stadium in all of sports". If anything i would encourage opposing fans to come. And as I have said before, you can't call yourself "Chicago's Big Ten Team" and have a stadium that small for football, it's ridiculous and a decade of marketing will go down the toilet.

Finally since we see NIL money now, shouldn't we be doing everything we can to get every extra dollar from every possible fan (even opposing)? I don't mean to be in your face with anybody but I still think many folks don't realize that this is a new world. I don't run this site, I love it, I subscribe, thanks Lou and everyone who works hard to make it happen! That said, there was a post on the Rock about a new commit and I asked, quite sincerely, any info on what NIL we are looking at for him? And it was deleted, as though it were a crass question. As thought I were asking about some kind of recruiting violation.

Well, it is not considered something "taboo" on other sites and in other news outlets for other teams.

https://www.profootballnetwork.com/top-10-nil-deals-in-2022/



Anyone can find 100 more articles like this.

Point is, instead of "going small", if we want to keep playing in the Big Ten, now is the time to "build big". I cannot fathom how we will keep up with the NIL reality with a 30,000 stadium. Sorry, don't see it.

About seating license fees, these are normal but not for all the seats. Take LSU for example, you want. Two foundations get the money (one seems to be somewhat quasi-independent - like the NU Gridiron Network?) and again, I can post more links to more schools, but if you want to have a lakeside facility, new stadium and a five million dollar a year head coach (and especially if you cut the stadiium down by 40 percent) be prepared for huge license fees.


 
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As long as we’re making stuff up, I’m going to imagine myself sitting in a beautiful stadium, in a comfortable seat...

Why not have 50,000 such seats instead of 30,000? TCU has 50,000 comfortable seats in their stadium. Stanford does too. North Carolina did a nice rebuild a few years back, same thing.
 
So I want to make sure I understand: we’re assuming that there’s a seat license fee. We’re assuming the price is going to go way up. And we assume the team is going to be bad …forever. Do I have that right? Or just speculating worst-case scenario?

As long as we’re making stuff up, I’m going to imagine myself sitting in a beautiful stadium, in a comfortable seat, paying a little bit more money to watch a scrappy team that goes to five straight bowl games and two Big 10 championship games in three years
This about Evanston fighting over Ryan
 
Anyone know home many tickets the Big Ten requires the home team set aside for the visiting team’s fans?
Minimum is 2,000 although 3,000 is customary for most schools.

Wisconsin used to be the outlier (sticking to the minimum). I’m not sure if that is still the case.
 
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About the opposing fans thing - I love it when opposing fans come in and rock the stadium along with ours. The two most exciting games I have seen NU play (not in person) were the famous Michigan vs NU game and the win over OSU. Full House, 50k, sure a ton of OSU fans, but the place was rockin! I'm worried that a 30,000 stadium will be too filled with older fans and too polite. I prefer a sense that tear gas could need to be deployed at any minute to keep the fans separated. I am afraid we will have 10-15,000 senior citizens there (out of 30,000) and it will be known as "the smallest and most quiet and boring stadium in all of sports". If anything i would encourage opposing fans to come. And as I have said before, you can't call yourself "Chicago's Big Ten Team" and have a stadium that small for football, it's ridiculous and a decade of marketing will go down the toilet.

Finally since we see NIL money now, shouldn't we be doing everything we can to get every extra dollar from every possible fan (even opposing)? I don't mean to be in your face with anybody but I still think many folks don't realize that this is a new world. I don't run this site, I love it, I subscribe, thanks Lou and everyone who works hard to make it happen! That said, there was a post on the Rock about a new commit and I asked, quite sincerely, any info on what NIL we are looking at for him? And it was deleted, as though it were a crass question. As thought I were asking about some kind of recruiting violation.

Well, it is not considered something "taboo" on other sites and in other news outlets for other teams.

https://www.profootballnetwork.com/top-10-nil-deals-in-2022/



Anyone can find 100 more articles like this.

Point is, instead of "going small", if we want to keep playing in the Big Ten, now is the time to "build big". I cannot fathom how we will keep up with the NIL reality with a 30,000 stadium. Sorry, don't see it.

About seating license fees, these are normal but not for all the seats. Take LSU for example, you want. Two foundations get the money (one seems to be somewhat quasi-independent - like the NU Gridiron Network?) and again, I can post more links to more schools, but if you want to have a lakeside facility, new stadium and a five million dollar a year head coach (and especially if you cut the stadiium down by 40 percent) be prepared for huge license fees.


You don’t attend each game, do you?
 
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You don’t attend each game, do you?
He does not. They are not building the stadium for people watching on tv, believe or not. Fitz rightfully wants a home field advantage for his team and we will never have that at 47,000 seats. And I firmly believe that a stadium at near capacity at any size has more energy than a half-filled huge stadium. Our non-conference games are terrible and not being able to tell if it’s a home game for big games is the worst. Give or take a couple of thousand seats, this is absolutely the right size. Our basketball stadium is equally small and it’s perfect. Ask Collins if he would like 4,000 more seats for opposing fans.
 
Can we also stop with idea that money should go to NIL instead of a stadium? They’re totally different things and should be an evaluated on their own merits and costs, not against each other.

The NIL market is new. The big dollars you are reading about aren’t for players NU is looking at. We (message board cogs) have no evidence about the return to NIL dollars at this point. Stuff will come out and we will start to learn more.
 
He does not. They are not building the stadium for people watching on tv, believe or not. Fitz rightfully wants a home field advantage for his team and we will never have that at 47,000 seats. And I firmly believe that a stadium at near capacity at any size has more energy than a half-filled huge stadium. Our non-conference games are terrible and not being able to tell if it’s a home game for big games is the worst. Give or take a couple of thousand seats, this is absolutely the right size. Our basketball stadium is equally small and it’s perfect. Ask Collins if he would like 4,000 more seats for opposing fans.
Going to games for 15 years or so in both sports makes the case for a smaller more raucous stadium environment. The people wanting the larger stadium mostly don’t go to the games!
 
Reminds me of Baylor's Mclane stadium in Waco which I used to drive by on my way to South Padre Island, TX. Mclane looks like a space ship when you're coming south on I35. I've always liked the design of the stadium. Capacity is about 45,00 and the cost was $266M. I think they got a real bargain.

https://www.mclanestadium.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/home-stadium-02.jpg

Shot from the Brazos river where they have "sailgating"
https://dxbhsrqyrr690.cloudfront.ne...aylorbears.com/images/2019/10/9/McLaneWeb.jpg

You have to do an "open link" to see the pictures. Left click on the link and then click on the leftmost symbol.
 
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