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Originally Posted by
rhineaux
1. In talking to Scott about this, it is his goal to clean the stadium after the turf installation is complete. He hopes to have it done prior to Kent St. I think this has been mentioned here before.
2. He does have plans and ideas of things he wants to do with the stadium in the immediate future. One thing that he mentioned to me is bringing the audio and video up to date. Those things are pitiful, and need updating, and we need a video board that doesn't require binoculars to see it. But, this goes to taking care of what we have, and maximizing what we have. and as someone said in another thread, hopefully he'll use some dough to get all of that black off of the stadium, and install brick around the inner wall.
3. There are areas of the stadium that are sinking, thanks to the soft sediment we have on the Gulf Coast, and the massive weight of all the concrete that sits atop it. This is a big reason why we have drainage problems in the restrooms and such. These issues need to be taken care of now, and long before we think about adding more weight to the structure.
We need cash for better facilities.better facilities for better recruits.better recruits for better teams.better teams for more fans.more fans for more cash. It's a vicious circle, but it is the one we are faced with. I believe that all of our time would be better spent worrying about what we can do now, in terms of donations, etc., and worry about the things that we can physically and financially do, in order to maximize what we have, instead of worrying about a potential stadium expansion that won't happen for 10-20 years, or even never. For example, of all the people who've posted on this thread, how many of you donated funds to the Robert Lee Golf tournament. I know that many of us did, but as the saying goes, talk is cheap.
Someone said that we need to expand even though we don't fill to capacity now. That is absurd. There is no way that we'll be able to raise the $100MM, or whatever, to build all of this stuff, if we don't average more than 10k-15k fans at our games, consistently. And, even if we could raise that sort of cash in our current state, I don't think it would be intelligent to blow our wad on adding 20k seats, or luxury boxes, or whatever, when we could spend it on beautification of the grounds, coaches salaries, recruiting budgets, buying more games, vastly expanding/improving student facilities (dorms and study halls), hiring more qualified folks in the Ath Dept so that we're properly staffed, etc. Like someone said, recruits need to be impressed with our facilities, and we need better recruits to win. True, but we also need all of those other things in order to win. Better coaches, better living quarters, better study halls, also get better recruits. A better looking complex will help to attract more fans. And, having more money for recruiting, having a full athletic staff to take care of all the small stuff, etc. will help take a lot of the load off of said coaches and will allow them to spend much more time on coaching. An expanded stadium would be nice in some regards, but it will not add to the win total like all of those other things do.
Perhaps instead of continuing this thread, one of the guys who knows Gerald and Scott better than I do, can contact them about some other projects they're working on, and the different things they'll need for such projects, and post them here or somewhere. Then all of us can see what's needed, and figure out if we could donate them ourselves, or if we have contacts with various businesses who would be willing to donate certain materials. I think that would be a much better use of our time.