The number I heard was 40-50 mil of it is stuff that is way out and likely to never be built as illustrated in plan. I am guessing that represents at least in part a 3rd stadium addition.
Iād actually like to see us at 35-40. It would feel big time, wouldnāt seem empty if you only put 75% in there, wouldnāt require temp seating for big games, wouldnāt require another expansion in 7 years to try to play conference roulette, etc. It also wouldnāt be a crazy overbuild to 60k or something stupid. Iāve heard that our stadium size has hurt our recruiting as feeling āsmall time.ā With sports, Iām a little more of the āgotta act like a big boy if you wanna be a big boyā mentality (within reason, of course).
Iād counter the big boys behave been removing seats. Imagine what 15k feels like in 45k. It would destroy any atmosphere we are trying to build. I think itās hurt us in recruiting some but not as much as some say. Hell our recent class was close to App and they had one of their best classes of all time. I think stadium that is 1/4 full hurt us even more.
We need that that perfect number- basically the lowest number possible to be a player in AAC expansion IMO.
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The AAC will be fine with a smaller stadium if that stadium is a state of the art facility. Quality over quantity. It canāt be below 25k though.
I heard the recruiting issue from some people in college athletics. My counter would be that 15k in 45k (which Iām not advocating for) would indicate other issues with our football program, atmosphere or no atmosphere (thatās really not much different than weāre doing now). I donāt see how you get considered by the AAC or higher without going to at least 30k, nor do I think weād want to go any smaller than that. A Charlotte/ECU conference game would easily sell that out, and I think alums would be excited to face UC and Memphis again.
Stadium Sizes:
Tulsa (smallest D-I school): 30,000
Navy: 34,000
USF: 65,890
UCF: 44,206
Houston: 40,000
ECU: 50,000
UC: 40,000
SMU: 32,000+
Memphis: 62,380
Tulane: 30,000
Temple: 68,532
With all of that said, while I do think stadium expansion is the top priority, Iām pretty concerned with how old Halton feels. Itās dated and canāt help with attendance (public and student) or recruiting. Much like our schoolās crown logo, Haltonās concourse, food, etc., all feel very Netscape Navigator 1990s.
Yeah I do think 28-32 seating will be the ballpark. With SROs 30k min which as you point out is the low end of AAC.
Halton refresh is on the list I know that and itās going to be fairly extensive.
If we increase our average attendance to by 50%, which would be HUGE, we would average about 18,000 a game. I see no reason to build anything larger than 25k for big games, with SRO and other options to get us over 30k like @s9er said.
You want to have 15k in a 35k seat stadium? I want no part of that. Our CUSA peers with their empty stadiums look absolutely awful on TV.
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clt says we need to tear down and start from a clean slate.
Weād be able to #DropTheRichardson if we did that, just sayinā. 
I think 25k is also fine as long as it is built in a way that doesnāt make further expansion difficult if needed in the future (unlikely given trends).
I donāt care what final capacity is. I care what it looks like. Even small upper levels will make the stadium look way more big time. Itās not a good look when there are some high school stadiums bigger and more impressive looking. Coastal stadium looks way more big time than ours now. Thatās sad.
Slightly off topic hereā¦ But what ever we do with the expansion, can we please integrate a steam whistle into the buildā¦ Let that magnificent bastard go every time we scoreā¦
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We definite need something obnoxious and memorable. I think it would be cool to build a bell tower in the open endzone #RIPBelkTower, with the old bell in it. Or hell a much louder bigger bell.
Isnāt there a XFL team with a loud steam whistle?
Build the 32K stadium and tarp off the 5k seats in the endzone and you have your 27k stadium with one week expansion to 32k.
lol you donāt spend 80M to have a tarped off end zone on TV
You donāt do a 10K stadium expansion for multi millions to be told by the conference you want to join āThatās cute, try againā either. If we arenāt doing stadium expansion to get into the AAC whatās the point? We have seen our maximum draw for C-USA. Itās about 14k.
*Weāve seen our max capacity for a losing program in CUSA.
Iām confident what ever we build AAC will have been consulted. If we donāt make it in it wonāt be due to stadium size.
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We were 5-1 at home, our only home loss to the eventual conference champ, and with a new and dynamic coach at the helm generating tons of publicity and we averaged a little over 12k. Even if you factor in faulty scanners and the rainy weekend of the Marshall game this is still anemic at best. The quality (or should I say notoriety) or our opponents is clearly the major draw for our fan base. Not a single C-USA team seems to do anything to excite our fanbase to attend.
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Fanbases take time to build, it doesnāt happen overnight.
On the flip side we had our first winning season in 7 years, itās been 15 since the athletic department had any sort of mainstream success. The word is out that weāre on the rise, I imagine youāre gonna see an attendance bump.
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I get all that and Iām not saying opponents donāt matter only that a winning program probably sells out our current build and one season doesnāt make a winning program.
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