"Victory Heights" announcement on Tuesday
- Thread starter Chris Peak
- Start date
Nobody goes to their games. They literally make negative dollars. So, tell me, who cares besides the friends and families of the players?
This is an irresponsible investment. The money should have gone to a football stadium. $300 million for non-revenue sports that actually already do have their own facilities when our football team (you know, the team that pays the bills for the volleyball players and gymnasts) plays in an albatross far too big for our needs is crazy.
Take care of football and then go and improve olympic sports.
A domed football stadium would be just as bad as playing at HF. Maybe worse.
The bottom line is this. The powers that be at Pitt don't want the hassle of a new stadium on campus. They don't want to make the effort to fundraise for it. They don't want to deal with the politics of it (much easier to just roll over and collect their salaries, wouldn't you?). They don't want to do the work to figure out where it will go. In fact, I bet various fans and journalists have each put in more effort towards on-campus stadium possibilities then anyone from Pitt's administration. Building the Pete on the stadium's former footprint was an easy out so they could claim there is no more room.
What I don't think they forsaw at the time was the money Pitt would receive from a new conference. Now that they have this annual added revenue of millions, they have chosen (mostly) to invest in the other sports. Next, they will work to remove the University subsidy. Pitt is operating like the Pirates, and will continue to do so. Fool a portion of the fanbase into believing that the next year, the next coach, the next recruit will be the magic bullet, all the while using that guaranteed revenue to fund something different.
The bottom line is this. The powers that be at Pitt don't want the hassle of a new stadium on campus. They don't want to make the effort to fundraise for it. They don't want to deal with the politics of it (much easier to just roll over and collect their salaries, wouldn't you?). They don't want to do the work to figure out where it will go. In fact, I bet various fans and journalists have each put in more effort towards on-campus stadium possibilities then anyone from Pitt's administration. Building the Pete on the stadium's former footprint was an easy out so they could claim there is no more room.
What I don't think they forsaw at the time was the money Pitt would receive from a new conference. Now that they have this annual added revenue of millions, they have chosen (mostly) to invest in the other sports. Next, they will work to remove the University subsidy. Pitt is operating like the Pirates, and will continue to do so. Fool a portion of the fanbase into believing that the next year, the next coach, the next recruit will be the magic bullet, all the while using that guaranteed revenue to fund something different.
I agree with your UConn comment. They didn't plan that it happened because nonone wanted them.
My comments were a "I hope not" prediction but its not a great signal for PITT football over the long haul.
PITT football is moving along slow and steady and from all indications next year should be really good based on recruiting.
But if the University had a long term plan and vision for football why wouldn't they incorporate football into their plan.
I think I can say with confidence there wont be two $ 300 mill sports complexes constructed in our lifetimes on the PITT campus.
So this is the end of the on campus stadium dreams and discussions.
Lets say the Steelers or whomever manages Heinz decides to jack up rental rates like the Linc did to Temple or dont want PITT football at Heinz.
What happens at that time?
If I had a valuable product that I wanted to keep, improve, or expand I would plan for its future.
I don't see much planning for PITT football in this proposal.
fyi- Personally I prefer Heinz field since we drive to the home games from a 300+ distance one way for each game and the Northshore is great for easy driving access hotel accommodations, parking, restaurants, and bars.
For a PITT football point of view an on campus stadium is the best long term plan.
We had two kids who graduated from PITT attended every home football Panther PITT ( we still have the towels), and basketball game were in the basketball Zoo.
They and their partners in crime hated going to Heinz but loved walking up the hill to The Pete.
My comments were a "I hope not" prediction but its not a great signal for PITT football over the long haul.
PITT football is moving along slow and steady and from all indications next year should be really good based on recruiting.
But if the University had a long term plan and vision for football why wouldn't they incorporate football into their plan.
I think I can say with confidence there wont be two $ 300 mill sports complexes constructed in our lifetimes on the PITT campus.
So this is the end of the on campus stadium dreams and discussions.
Lets say the Steelers or whomever manages Heinz decides to jack up rental rates like the Linc did to Temple or dont want PITT football at Heinz.
What happens at that time?
If I had a valuable product that I wanted to keep, improve, or expand I would plan for its future.
I don't see much planning for PITT football in this proposal.
fyi- Personally I prefer Heinz field since we drive to the home games from a 300+ distance one way for each game and the Northshore is great for easy driving access hotel accommodations, parking, restaurants, and bars.
For a PITT football point of view an on campus stadium is the best long term plan.
We had two kids who graduated from PITT attended every home football Panther PITT ( we still have the towels), and basketball game were in the basketball Zoo.
They and their partners in crime hated going to Heinz but loved walking up the hill to The Pete.
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Would you accept politics as the reason for this investment?
If yes....would you please just shut up?
Some of our facilities are pretty terrible. I don't like Heinz but there is nothing wrong with the facility. And I bet these new Victory Heights facilities see a great deal of use by the general student population. And that should be the first priority. Football stadium will get addressed eventually. No rush.
I can certainly imagine why. It’s a pain in the ass to get on a school bus and drive over to the game and then wait to get picked up and carted back to campus. Who the hell wants to do that?
Personally, I don’t mind Heinz Field either. Then again, I’m not a college kid. I find it very convenient for all the reasons you do.
I’m not in nearly the shape I was in during college and I’m sure walking up Cardiac Hill six Saturdays a year nowadays would be a pain in the ass for me and my crew. Right now, we just park in a parking lot, then walk along a flat surface into the stadium. It is really hard to beat that just from a sheer convenience standpoint.
However, I also know in my heart that a 68,000 seat stadium is at least 20,000 seats too large for the University of Pittsburgh and that is always going to hurt us.
Pitt MUST do a much better job of creating a consistently fun home atmosphere and you simply can’t do that whenever a third (or more) of your stadium’s seats are empty. And when half of them are empty, as is all too often the case, it actively hurts you.
As far as your question about why not include plans for a new on campus football stadium in the master plan, I think that’s very easily explained. The second you do that, that’s where all of the donations and media attention goes.
I have no idea if they have plans for a football stadium, public or otherwise? However, I know that if I were them and I did have such plans, I would definitely withhold that information from the public until the other projects were fully funded.
Otherwise, you face the exact same mentality that some expressed in this thread. People would say, ”Why are we wasting all this money on facilities nobody cares about when we could be spending it on a football stadium?”
Can they raise an additional $300 million to fund a football stadium after already spending $300 million on their Olympic sports? I have no idea? However, I suspect the answer to that question is yes, but not right away.
However, I have no doubt that a professionally run fundraising organization can find a way to raise $300 million for some badly needed athletic facilities.
Really, you don’t even need to raise $300 billion. You can finance it and raise that money over a pretty long period of time to pay it off. Lots and lots of schools and professional sports teams have done just that over the years.
To me, the only questions are space related and priority related. Is it a good use of that kind of money? Of course it isn’t, but is it a justifiable amount of money? Of course it isn’t, but plenty of schools have decided otherwise.
I do know this much: if I had a nickel for every project that was eventually built that I was assured beforehand had no chance of ever happening, I’d be a pretty rich guy.
Who cares if the Field House is outdated or the T&F team doesn't have a track? I mean seriously, why does anyone care? The only reason we even have those teams in the first place is because the NCAA makes us. They make negative dollars and the combined attendance for all of volleyball, gymnastics, and track is probably about the same as 1 football game.
Man this university does some dumb sh!t. We have a horrific stadium situation and instead of fixing it, we are building a volleyball arena for our volleyball team which actually happens to not only have their own arena, are one of the premier programs which shows that recruits must think its a fine facility.
I don’t think you are fully considering this. All of the research shows that your current student-athletes will be your most generous donors going forward.
Student-athletes tend to have more self-discipline and self-confidence than many of their peers. They also tend to have a built-in network of contacts that most of their peers don’t have at the same age. That often translates to post-college success.
If they have a good experience while at your university, they are going to be much more likely to be inclined to give back to the university. Over time, it becomes a cycle of success which translates to everything.
For example, that’s exactly how Penn State got the Pegula Ice Arena. The owner of Range Resources literally cut them a check for $100 million to build a new arena start a D1 ice hockey program.
Remember, this project is going to directly impact roughly 85% of our student-athletes. I’m sorry but I just don’t agree that it’s a waste of time or money. I think Pitt’s problem is they have not thought in the long term.
I think you build the program up the right way, just like everyone else has, and you go from there. Trying to take shortcut after shortcut after shortcut is exactly what led us to this position in the first place.
Student-athletes tend to have more self-discipline and self-confidence than many of their peers. They also tend to have a built-in network of contacts that most of their peers don’t have at the same age. That often translates to post-college success.
If they have a good experience while at your university, they are going to be much more likely to be inclined to give back to the university. Over time, it becomes a cycle of success which translates to everything.
For example, that’s exactly how Penn State got the Pegula Ice Arena. The owner of Range Resources literally cut them a check for $100 million to build a new arena start a D1 ice hockey program.
Remember, this project is going to directly impact roughly 85% of our student-athletes. I’m sorry but I just don’t agree that it’s a waste of time or money. I think Pitt’s problem is they have not thought in the long term.
I think you build the program up the right way, just like everyone else has, and you go from there. Trying to take shortcut after shortcut after shortcut is exactly what led us to this position in the first place.
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Upon further review, the fitness center is in a slightly different spot than where I thought it was. It seems that demolishing that part of the Pete wouldn’t actually decrease the width of the footprint. Guess it was worth a shot.
Also, FWIW, the student gym space at the Pete is ticketed to be turned into an academic center for varsity athletes when the big student rec center on O’Hara is finished. Most P5 schools have a dedicated athletic facility for academics, study halls, tutoring, career services, etc.Upon further review, the fitness center is in a slightly different spot than where I thought it was. It seems that demolishing that part of the Pete wouldn’t actually decrease the width of the footprint. Guess it was worth a shot.
It’s a featured project on the Pitt AD’s fundraising site: https://hailtopitt.com/giving-opportunities/leadership-giving/index.html
As they should, that makes sense. Honestly, I wasn’t aware they were converting it, thought they were going to give that it’s own separate building. Thanks for letting me know. There goes that pipe dream!
They haven’t promoted it very much; I just stumbled across it a few months ago on the fundraising site. It does make sense though - I suspect that they’re holding off on promoting it because the student rec center, the enabling project, isn’t going to be done until 2022.
Or, maybe they’ll talk about it tomorrow. Who knows! In any case, with the new rec center, the computer science building on the Syria Mosque site, and Victory Heights, it’s going to be an exciting time on campus and will allow Pitt, as a university, to keep pace with what its peer and aspirational schools were doing over a decade ago...even if it’s a football-neutral series of moves.
Stanford cares about these sports. Michigan cares about these sports. So does Texas, UNC and UCLA. When you look at the Directors Cup for best overall collegiate sports program it is a who’s who of the best ACADEMIC schools in the Power 5 conferences.
Pitt’s failure to invest in these sports is an embarrassment on the academic institution as a whole. Victory Heights is a necessary if investment if Pitt wants to be considered an elite public university on a national level.
FB & BB...nothing else matters. Schools in the middle of nowhere need to have events to make noise.....schools in areas with cultural events do not!
Harvard has 42 varsity sports.
Is Cambridge, Mass in the middle of nowhere?
None of the schools mentioned are in the middle of nowhere.
It's an idea that is so batshit moronic that it might be something we'd do.
Then why did you respond to my Harvard post as well as MrsPups? You have a funny way of showing how little you care.
I'm hearing that the Steelers have no interest in sharing a stadium with Pitt when Heinz Field is (soon) obsolete. The Rooneys may force Pitt's hand on a new stadium, or Pitt will be playing games at CMU.
Which solves the parking and traffic problem on campus.
I guess the Steelers aren’t interested in public funding for their new venture?
That’s how we ended up as partners the last time. They wanted a new stadium and the city needed a place to house the football team of its namesake university.
I think someone either likes to tell tall tales or has some really bad sources.
What, you don't believe the guy sitting at the corner of the bar at the local SNPJ club?
The Steelers like money. Perhaps they will make them pay more like the Eagles did with Temple. But any NFL team would gladly let a college team share if the price was right.
Stadium feasibility study in 2025 in anticipation of the Heinz lease expiring in 2030. Highly unlikely the Steelers will want to renew when all the other teams are getting new playgrounds.
Solves the tarping problem which also goes away immediately.
So will 50% of the threads on this site - Tarping Heinz.
Now we'll need a few dozen folding chairs which creats a new problem and thread potential - Folding Chairs at the CMU Stadium.
Where do you put the folding chairs? No room at the CMU stadium.
So will 50% of the threads on this site - Tarping Heinz.
Now we'll need a few dozen folding chairs which creats a new problem and thread potential - Folding Chairs at the CMU Stadium.
Where do you put the folding chairs? No room at the CMU stadium.
The Victory Heights work should be done well in advance of when we need to turn our attention to the football stadium.
If the Steelers want to change things up with the stadium, they'd have a few options, but it's highly unlikely Pitt would not be included. As DVY said, including Pitt was instrumental in getting public funding when building Heinz. If they were to build their own stadium somewhere outside the city, they would be paying ten times what they paid toward Heinz. I seriously doubt they would be able to tear down Heinz and rebuild a new stadium on the spot without Pitt; there would be too many issues with funding and logistics. It would create issues with where they would play while rebuilding, as there is no way they'd finish that in one offseason.
I think you're right about a feasibility study 5 years in advance. That's longer than the planning period was for Heinz. The Steelers would probably have some idea of what they want to do at that point (if anything) for when the lease is up.
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