You know, after looking at that cool aerial, I noticed that the student side of Cajun Field extends further into the end zones than the pressbox side. I wonder if extending the pressbox side to match the student side is feasible. It seems that a modest expansion such as that would a) minimize the cost and b) show signs of the growth in Ragin' Cajun football. I don't think it would add more than about 5,000 seats, giving us about 36,000. That would put us above the old 30,000 minimum D1-A threshold. If you look at a lot of the "lower-tier" D1-A programs, many have stadia with seating capacity of 30-31K. I know many have said don't add more seats until we fill the ones we have. I don't really disagree with that philosophy, but you have to show some forward progress at some point in time. To have a vision of moving forward, sometimes you have do things a little bit out of the ordinary. I know we have a lot of needs and a little money, but this is just (more) food for thought.
BTW, thanks for sharing the photo link.