[NU Sports] Saturdays at Dyche Stadium

[Jim Leonard]

A new stadium is too much to hope for in the next 15-20 years, but it sure would be nice. A lakefront stadium would be a beautiful setting for game days, but I don't think it makes the traffic/commuting issues any easier. 

Here are a few things that I think we could potentially do in the short term:

1) Cut a deal where the Metra is free if you're holding a game ticket. Metra's incremental cost is zero, so there has to be some opportunity.

2) Have a family section where families can bring in there own food and beverages. Given that a movie is $10, you might get a family to pay $15 for a child's ticket (though Julie's point is well taken), but then when you hit them up for $3.50 for bottled water, that's where the budget for the day is blown. 

3) I've wondered about the NCAA policy on alcohol so I'm not 100% sure you could do this one. The NCAA doesn't allow you to sell beer, but (at least in the high dollar suites) it can be provided. I wonder if they could take those really bad seats by the scoreboard in the north end zone and designate it 'The Big Ten's Beer Garden'. You'd have to wall it off so that the drinkers don't mingle with the crowd, but perhaps you could give away (included with the ticket price) 3 pints of purple beer to fans sitting in that section.

4) Changing the game times should be investigated. In the age of the Big Ten Network there doesn't seem to be a reason that we hold ourselves to the ESPN mandate of 11 AM kickoffs. 

5) I believe in the general principles of free market economics, so if the seats don't sell at $25-$35 then the price needs to come down. The faithful out there will pay, so you don't need to cut the price across the board. But, you could leave a designated section (hell, the whole south endzone) and do an online auction that starts 30 hours before each kickoff. Start with $20 per seat and drop the price $.50 per hour until 9 AM on game day. If that brings potential new fans in at $4 a ticket, it's better than an empty seat. 

6) Another idea would be to actually reduce the number of seats. The seats in the south endzone are horrible anyway. You could tear them down and bring the available seats from say 49,000 to 40,000. I realize that you'd leave some money on the table when a gauranteed sellout (like a 9-0 tOSU team) comes to town, but it would save all those embarrassing TV shots of field goals into empty seats. Colorado and Oregon have smaller stadiums than Dyche and they have managed to develop a better atmosphere. 

6a) If you did remove the south end zone seats, as a NUMBAlum I can at least dream of a bandshell constructed in the south endzone. Put NUMB down there and let the entire stadium hear the fight songs. That would have a tremendous impact on the game day experience. 


Go Cats!
Jim