Anybody know of plans to put up more stadium lights?

[Shamoan]

compared to comparably sized stadiums dws has always felt poorly lit. for reference:

autzen stadium (53,800)

bobby dodd (55,000)

jack trice stadium (55,000)

papa johns cardinal stadium (56,000)

carter finley stadium(57,500)

then dws

there is certainly inconsistent lighting on the field and pictures can be misleading, but i know some of you recognize the inconsistency. i guess we can add it to the laundry list of things to fix, but now seems like a great time to improve the lighting.

 

[karlchilders.sixpack]

Don't know, first time I saw it lighted, there were three rented light poles,
if I recall correctly.


Looks ok to me.

 

[patdog]

None of those stadiums look better lit than Davis Wade from those pictures. You can't just look a the number of poles, you'd have to look at the total lumens put out by the lighting at each stadium.

 

[irondawg007]

Once the other massive HD scoreboard goes up, we can likely take some lights off.***

 

[esplanade91]

We need more lights from more angles. Would cut down on each player having 4 distinct shadows.

 

[Shamoan]

im not looking at number of poles necessarily. look at 15 yard line on the home side of the hash. to me it looks darker than the rest of the stadium as do the endzones. its just something i have always thought about the stadium compared to other stadiums i have seen. i concede that it might be an optical illusion because maroon is such a dark color, but even an empty davis wade stadium seems a little dark to me.

as far as them looking looking equally lit, i took these samples from the same portion of the field from the source pictures excluding autzen stadium. clearly one is much lighter, two are medium, and one is darker. guess which one we are.

disclaimer, pictures can be somewhat misleading, but i did my best to represent the reality of the lighting situation.

 

[patdog]

They all look well lit. You do realize that all turf is not the same shade of green don't you.

 

[BigMotherTucker]

DWS is dark... I notice it as well.

 

[SignalToNoise]

Its misleading because A) The turf might be a different color, and B) the color temperature is probably off in all of those.

At any rate, I've always thought DWS lighting was just fine.

 

[Shamoan]

i do realize that but three of those are grass and they represent the lightest, middle, and darkest. the other medium is papa johns which is turf grass. bobby dodd, jack trice, and davis wade are all represented as true grass turf fields in my color swatches.


edit: check that...all four are real grass. they are carter finley, bobby dodd, jack trice, and dws in that order.

 

[Shamoan]

well, without a photometer or data on these stadiums, this will have to do, but i can feel fairly confident in saying they are not the same as evidenced by the photos. is it a perfect model, absolutely not, but at least it gives a fair representation as i did not select photos that were the cream of the crop for the other stadiums and the darkest photo i could find for dws.

at any rate, to me, and apparently some of our readers, it looks somewhat dark and inconsistent.

 

[MSUDawg25]

Am I wrong or are there way more sets of lights than that on the west side. Picture is looking at the east side. Unbalanced, maybe. Remember we didnt even have lights at the stadium until the 90's?

 

[The Usual Suspect]

DWS has always seemed darker on tv than most other stadiums. However I think part of the illusion is that our school color (maroon) does not show up as brightly in the stands. I did think the new end zone seemed darkened this year, but it should lighten up some with the new scoreboard. I would think that the SEC mandates a minimum light rating for tv purposes required by each stadium.

 

[CuzDawg]

DWS is definitely darker and is noticeable on TV. I am hoping that the lack of an enclosed End zone is the biggest problem. If u add the new EZ and another jumbo tron, it will be interesting to see if this fixes the look on TV.

 

[dawgstudent]

If I remember correctly - to save $$$ - we didn't make the new upper deck strong enough to support lights to match the West Side. So if we ever add another set of lights - it's going to have to be built from the ground up. Don't know if that's a big deal.

 

[Shamoan]

LT strikes again.

 

[121Josey]

Lighting - or lack thereof - is noticeable in DWS and especially on TV. I suspect that in the last 12 years, lighting solutions have advanced enough to overcome any structural problems.

 

[was21]

I think that may have been against LSU. I think we won that game.

 

[RocketDawg]

You are right. I think there are at least 4 light clusters on the West side.

An arrangement like Alabama has seems ideal to me ... they have strips all around (or virtually all around) the tops of the seating areas and have very even light distribution. The capacity of the stadium should have very little to do with lighting requirements, unless there's only one level like the Bears have. For example, Alabama's lights may be a little further away from the field than ours, but not much. And of course, the playing fields are the same size.

I've thought for a long time that we needed a lighting upgrade.

 

[Xenomorph]

In 1999 the east upper deck expansion originally looked like this:

The supporting structure for the light stanchions was removed prior to construction due to the budget being cut. I've heard someone in the athletic department describe the procedure for going back and adding the lights to the east to match the west as now being "absolutely cost prohibitive".

 

[Shamoan]

there has got to be a creative solution to fix the problem. with the program coming into some serious money these days, maybe this is something we can look in to over the next few years considering the current situation isnt ideal.

looks like something like this might be possible although it would require a significant retrofit to what we currently have in place, but clearly im no structural engineer...just merely a proposed solution for those with concrete design experience to hash out:

its kinda annoying knowing the lighting budget was axed and a substandard alternative was chosen. its not imperative that we half-*** everything under the templeton admin, but it certainly seems that way.

 

[121Josey]

The supporting structure for the light stanchions was removed prior to construction due to the budget being cut. I've heard someone in the athletic department describe the procedure for going back and adding the lights to the east to match the west as now being "absolutely cost prohibitive".

Thus, the decision to build the upperdeck and not horseshoe in the NEZ was a monumental failure.

What about making the West match the East? And are aesthetics that important when you build a crooked NEZ facade to save space on a lot?

 

[Xenomorph]

Speaking of lighting... Would a new Dudy Noble...

...come complete with adequate lighting? Because as bad as DWS may be, DNF is downright terrible.

 

[uptowndawg]

I'm going to go ahead and assume that this is a picture of LT and the architect. LT's pointing at the East upper deck lights and saying "How much does that cost?... We don't need that. And you know, I'm quite the architect myself. Have I showed you the bathrooms I designed downstairs?

 

[mjh94]

so this is why he had so many 11:21 am starts back in the day! **

there has got to be a creative solution to fix the problem. with the program coming into some serious money these days, maybe this is something we can look in to over the next few years considering the current situation isnt ideal.

looks like something like this might be possible although it would require a significant retrofit to what we currently have in place, but clearly im no structural engineer...just merely a proposed solution for those with concrete design experience to hash out:

its kinda annoying knowing the lighting budget was axed and a substandard alternative was chosen. its not imperative that we half-*** everything under the templeton admin, but it certainly seems that way.

 

[BigMotherTucker]

I cant tell if serious or not... But thats Davis Wade, i belive. Aside from that... I think your post is spot on.

 

[uptowndawg]

Well now I feel like an idiot. I didn't know who that was.

 

[The Peeper]

It was Nov 13, '82, it was LSU, we won 27-24 and in the beloved words of Jack Cristil "it was as cold as a pawnbrokers heart". MUSCO lighting came in early that week and set up truck mounted lights on the road that ran behind the East side at that time.

 

[RocketDawg]

I would think that decision will long be regretted. Sounds like it was made without thinking thorough the consequences, and hopefully they didn't make the same mistake with the endzone expansion.

 

[drt7891]

The stadium feels darker than the field because the stadium lights are really only supposed to light the field surface itself. I know TV mandates a minimum lighting threshold on the field itself and from what I understand, DWS far exceeds that threshold. Same for baseball... But DNF could use better lighting, I think.

 

[Shamoan]

honestly, i would sacrifice the second hd scoreboard to get better lighting. outside of the pure opulence cool factor of a two huge dawgzillatrons, how practical are TWO giant scoreboards at opposite ends of the field?....not very imo, but still pretty cool (this way, we also avoid the awkward appearance of a jumbotron that is not at an awkward angle from the exterior view. they would have to rename the scoreboard club, but i would make the switch to get the lighting to where it was no longer half-assed and potentially realize the original and intended design of dws.