Mostly kidding, but there was a lot more demolition involved than I imagined. The progress being made already is seriously impressive.
The destruction is impressive!
A student lounge area with outdoor seating under the student section wasn't something I had heard about before.
Shocker. You are the most miserable person on this board. God, if I hated everything as much as you I’d get lost in the woods. But then again the trees wouldn’t be green enough for you.
I hope that they are leaving on the table an option to add something significant over there in the future. If done right, I think they could add some suites above the current student section _and_ add a few thousand "cheap seats" above the suites.
The shocker to me, Coach, is that you would disagree with me on this. I would have thought you would want to see comprehensive improvement down there. If they weren't going to address that 40s-era seating they might as well have touched up the restrooms and concessions, left up the Floyd building and called it a day.
I think these are primarily facilities improvements, nothing much to do with seating. We all know there have been plans in the works for seating improvements for years. Maybe they decided this should be taken care of first, or it will be never happen. I like the idea of doing this now and working on the rest later; maybe it will curb excessive investment in the "luxury box" seating crap we keep hearing about.
For that to happen, the stadium trend we've seen develop over at least the last dozen years, even at the college level, would have to be reversed. With the growing emphasis on accouterments that bring six-figure revenue annually per unit, I don't think that will happen.
Why would they improve seats that rarely get sat in? The students don’t sit down. They wander around and stand up. Hell they stand ON the seats 75% of the time. Why would the university pump 10’s or 100’s of thousands of dollars to upgrade the seats for the to do that? That would be stupid. And he mentions in the video upgrading the bathrooms on that side of the stadium.
Anyone might be sitting there someday, Coach. In my time going to Carolina games, I've seen the students move all the way around the east side from one end to the other. I started in the south end zone as a student in 1968.
I understand that, and if the plan was to move them somewhere else, I’d be all for it. But that hasn’t been mentioned. They’ve been in the north stands and north east corner for at least 25 years. Looks pretty much like that’s where they’ll be. So unless we are revamping everything and moving them, my point remains. And if you did it now and didn’t move them they’d tear it up. And the next folks in woud be pissed.
They’re building an enclosed area for the students.
OK, I guess I did hear that part, but assumed there must have been something else to justify tearing down a fairly modern three story building. That must be some "enclosed area."
It is pretty remarkable. In the 1980s, when Williams-Brice began to look like the Williams-Brice of today, the population of SC was 3.1 million and the Columbia campus had an enrollment of about 24,000. Today, the state has 5.5 million residents and USC's total enrollment in Columbia is about 38,000. That's a crap-ton more potential "customers" than the program had in the 80s, but they are only really interested in growing the elite customer base.
