Pitt Resizing Acrisure Stadium Seating
- Thread starter Strick73
- Start date
They will eventually be playing at the local high school stadium.
Doesn't make sense to move your biggest money maker sport off campus, does it? I think if they could do this one over they would.
Couldn't they tie a bunch of barges together on the Allegheny and roll some turf over them and create a field that way? That would be interesting.
This is just the big shift coming in “college” sports. Rutgers, Pitt, Northwestern,etc….soon will be a lower division school. No pay to play. Only about 20 schools will be willing and able to play in the big boy arena financially. Not sure if I want PSU paying 20 year olds millions to play football. Certainly we will never play and pay in the basketball big boy league.
Rutgers and Northwestern aren't going anywhere. See the TV money. Even a Super League includes both of them.
See the thread with the linked article below regarding Rutgers. Someone will be the first to say **** it.
I just texted my brother that exact same thing. I bet that if they had to do it all over again, they would've redone Pitt Stadium like Stanford did with their stadium, or built a new stadium on that site, and then built a new basketball arena somewhere else. My uncle had Pitt season tickets until he passed away, and my brother and I went to almost every Pitt home game from the mid 70s until I was able to get PSU season tickets in 1991; I was at the 1975 ND game when Dorsett ran wild, and all of the PSU games from 1977 until 1998. Pitt Stadium obviously was very antiquated and had almost no amenties, but it wasn't a bad place to see a game on a nice September or October Saturday.
Even today they can put together the money to build a stadium they just won't. If they ever wanted to be in the Big 10 that needs to be their first step. They promised to build one a some years ago then nothing. IMO sPitt on them is not serious about football anymore.
Even a school like South Florida is building their own stadium. Pitt doesn't even need a stadium the size of a Rutgers or BC; they could have a stadium the size of SMU's which would serve their purposes perfectly. I'm a PSU fan, so I hope that they continue the absurdity of playing at the Steelers' stadium, because it's not doing their program one bit of good.
They won't even get rid of that toxic loser Nardoze their commitment to the program is nonexistent.
The best part of the football stadium was the basketball court underneath the stands in the storage areas.
That stadium was built so well that it could've been refurbished like Stanford Stadium was; I wouldn't call it dilapidated. In fact, the facade looked as nice as it probably ever had in its last few years of existence. I have attached some photos from the Wiki site, one of which shows the facade during the last game ever played there, which was on the same day that PSU lost to Michigan in 1999.
Pitt Stadium - Wikipedia
Pitt Stadium - Wikipedia
There were structural problems Pitt didn't want to fix, coupled with the crappy attendance.[/url]
Last edited:
Time will tell. If they're in that much trouble (assuming you believe it) the last thing they can afford to do is give up the revenue they get with the Big Ten football contract. Time to cut all other sports.
At some point, the networks will make decisions as to who stays and goes based on ratings. The Golden Goose will not last forever.
Not to mention the bluebloods carrying the conferences; why should OSU/PSU/Michigan/etc. share revenue with Purdue and Rutgers? They see ND and ACC schools taking all the money for themselves and IMO that's where it's at.
Northwestern has a bunch of well heeled donors so they're good for as long as those folks continue to pony up.
Not with the money NW is spending and their bright new fancy (and looks pretty cool) stadium.
All leagues have their perennial bottom-feeders. As an example, NFL has consistently dysfunctional franchises like the Jets, Raiders, Browns, Bengals, Dolphins, and Cardinals, to name a few. Granted, the Jets, Raiders, and Dolphins have past gravitas, but it's well in the rearview mirror.
Now, granted, "college" football isn't like the NFL in that there isn't a "National College Football League" - rather, the individual conferences have their own agreements that cover revenue sharing and TV contracts.
Would the B1G kick out, say, Rutgers, Maryland, and Northwestern because they're not "pulling their weight?" I doubt it; I think there would be a push for unequal revenue sharing first (which essentially deep-sixed the Big 12 - caution is advised). And, lesser schools can now point to Indiana as the shining example of a college FB program that really can pull themselves to the top from the bottom.
Now, granted, "college" football isn't like the NFL in that there isn't a "National College Football League" - rather, the individual conferences have their own agreements that cover revenue sharing and TV contracts.
Would the B1G kick out, say, Rutgers, Maryland, and Northwestern because they're not "pulling their weight?" I doubt it; I think there would be a push for unequal revenue sharing first (which essentially deep-sixed the Big 12 - caution is advised). And, lesser schools can now point to Indiana as the shining example of a college FB program that really can pull themselves to the top from the bottom.
Not entirely. The networks need games to fill air time. As it is currently, they only contract with conferences for as limited number of games each season. They pick and choose those that they want. The dregs get shipped off to something like BTN.
More likely change is that the Big Ten moves away from distributing revenue equally among members. Could adopt a formula like the ACC where shares are determined by, among other things, TV ratings, post-season performance, etc.
Very true. Dilapidated is an understatement. I went to many Penn State games in that stadium. It smelled besides looking like a dump. It was located in a Pittsburgh slum with no parking whatsoever. You had to abandon your car in a crime infested shanty town and hope it didn't get stolen. The pitt "students" were always rowdy and ignorant. It was beneficial to Pittsburgh when the place was demolished. Unfortunately, the rest of the pitt "campus" was not demolished too.
Come on. The stadium was situated in the middle of Fitzgerald Field House, UPMC Presby, the VA Hospital, Pitt Dental School, and Western Pysch, and the residential neighborhood by the stadium hardly could be called a slum. I grew up going to that stadium and also graduated from Pitt Law in 1992, but never was a Pitt football fan (I was and sometimes still am a Pitt basketball fan), and never had any issues there, and that includes when I would wear my PSU gear to all of the PSU games that I attended there.
Last edited:
The one game I went to (Virginia Tech against Michael Vick), I did not feel safe walking back to our car. We were approached/harassed several times by people (homeless?) who all had the same story - they needed money to pay for their car to be fixed or released because it had broken down and/or was towed. They always beefed up this tale by showing what looked like a ticket or invoice of some kind. Maybe I just had back luck, because I thought the stadium was fine and actually a good place to watch a game.
Thanks. Like I said, I went to a lot of games there and also attended Pitt and did a lot of medical legal reseach at the Pitt Med School Library, and also attended many basketball games at Fitzgerald Field House and the Pete, and never had that issue. In fact, when I attended Pitt Law, I rode buses from downtown to Oakland and back for three years, and never was approached by homeless; maybe I just was lucky
Last edited:
South Florida is moving into an on-campus stadium in 2027; they saw the light.
Kind of like their early 1900s national championships when they did play high schools or Clarion
Just a guess that behind the scenes there was pressure to move in with the Steelers to help with stadium funding. Foolish because they should have learned from the fiasco that Gopher football became. In big part due to moving to an on campus stadium (with the Twins as well) to help the Vikings get a new stadium that was known as the Metro Dome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_H._Humphrey_Metrodome Most Gopher football fans call those years the wilderness years.
Stupid to follow our example.
Yes, it quite simply has been a disaster for Pitt, which has been confirmed by them now shutting off the balcony seats for their games and putting up advertisement tarps on seats. They thought that they could sell the fact that they play in the same stadium as the Steelers, which might have worked a little at first but definitely doesn't work anymore.
What's more is that Acrisure rapidly is becoming outdated itself compared to the indoor palaces that a lot of other NFL teams are building, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Steelers eventually build a new stadium in the suburbs like the Browns, Chiefs and probably the Bears are going to do. Therefore, if this ever happens, Pitt will be forced to either play their games in a stadium located maybe in Cranberry or Southpointe, or build their own stadium, which they obviously should do now.
That's where we disagree...the networks need volume not just quality.