pittdan77
Athletic Director
Are you arguing that an on campus stadium would be better for the band or for the people that think football is the side show?
Has playing off-campus helped Pitt football?
- Thread starter cbpitt2
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Keep up with the thread. I responded to the misguided statement that pageantry and tradition were no longer in college football. It stands alone as a topic.
I have yet to see how much revenue Pitt takes in relation to parking, concessions, etc., and how much goes to the Stadium Authority and the Parking Authority unlike which Pitt would totally control with an on-campus stadium.
Thank you for being the first person to somewhat answer the question I posed. That being: Has playing off-campus helped Pitt football? Perhaps with no one answering that question directly speaks loudly to that answer.
Clubs and luxury boxes are the revenue sources
They have always outsourced concessions and parking even on campus
Thank you for the info. Why would you outsource parking if Pitt owned the land where parking is available?
pittdan77
Athletic Director
You started a stadium thread and made it sound like what the band does is a relevant part of the conversation. I feel like I'm pretty on topic.
Because Pitt doesn’t own all the land where parking took place .
There isn’t enough Pitt controlled parking for a football game - plus I’d wager they aren’t Pitt employees running those garages .
Concessions pitt stadium just like the cafeteria was sodexho or Aramark
Pitt stadium being dump wasn't the basis of the question. It was not having an on campus stadium. And we act like Pitt stadium couldn't be renovated.
The students have showed up, and it’s easier for the average fan to get to Acrisure as opposed to Oakland.
If by "renovated" you mean completely gutted down to the studs and essentially rebuilt from scratch on the same site then yes, Pitt Stadium could have been "renovated".
However it would have been deemed feasible to do - there are engineers who can do those type of things.
You’re confused
Remember the SOS crew who fundraised to save pitt stadium ?
I think they raised enough for some pizzas
Pitt stadium certainly could have been "renovated", but the cost would have been prohibitive
pittdan77
Athletic Director
The thing is, most of these really old stadiums that were renovated are still dumps. Remember when they put all of that money into ND's stadium and then had sewage backing up into the stadium? The Rose Bowl is a horrible place to watch a game. This board makes fun of "the erector set" all the time and all PSU does is throw money at that stadium and it isn't even that old compared to some of the other places. Heck, they put up temporary lights at Pitt stadium to play night games and then the fan base complained about them.
The simple reality that stadium was literally crumbling
so sinking $400mil to fix it to even be remotely updates would be stupid
Not ridiculous if one understood or had the foresight to understand the landscape of college athletics and FB’s preeminent position in that landscape. A BB arena could have been built in a lot of areas on campus instead of on the footprint of Pitt stadium.
As noted
Our revenues are way up
Student attendance is great
We now have a dedicated practice facility
Playing at Heinz helped make Pitt football more competitive in the college football landscape - because of the substantial increase in revenue
The Pete was 3 projects combined into one: convocation center and athletic office/basketball practice facility, student rec center, and water chiller plant.
A scaled down version of the convocation center was planned for the OC lot, which has its own issues as there is it sits on top of an old mine with a rumored underground fire. But think Liacouras Center at Temple connected to Pitt Stadium across Sutherland Drive similar to Conte Forum at BC.
That wasn't even happening until the university got the state to release more money by combining the projects and playing ball with plan B (North Shore Stadium projects), because the prior university administration had squandered the original amount released for the arena which it had incorrectly hoped would jump start fundraising. The late 90s university administration was stuck with an insufficient amount of funds to start any project. This was in the context of the 90s when the academic side wasn't hitting its undergrad enrollment targets. The whole place was a mess.
This was after a decade of failed silent fundraising phased aimed at rennovated Pitt Stadium into a combined domed facility ala the Carrier Dome.
If events were happening today, 25 years later when the university and athletic department are in a much different place, fiscal health wise, things would probably have gone differently. Hence you have a project like Victory Heights. But politically and financially in the 90s, there really wasn't another realistic play at the time.
But I'd be interested to know where a project as big as the final version of the Pete would have been placed on campus.
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Any revenue figures/data to verify your statement or is that from ACC money?
As for being more competitive, comparing the last 24 seasons at Pitt Stadium to the first 24 seasons off-campus, Pitt’s winning percentage at home has increased .043. Not earth-shattering by any means.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
I've been told that athletic department fundraising isn't satisfactory. Would that be true? Is there pressure for that to improve?
Winning isn’t tied to stadiums
Hence why I didn’t use that as a metric
I’ll do a bit of research - but the databases don’t go back that far
I was a grad student liaison to athletics so this was all presented prior to the decision to move for financials
Student attendance is just observations deom
My opinions in both places
Based on what data?
I guess you've never been to Death Valley(Clemson or LSU), or Bryant-Denny? You're a 4 or 5 star recruit and see these stadiums and atmosphere, it absolutely contributes to winning.
Compared to peers, of course it isn't satisfactory. Can't squeeze blood from a stone.
I guess you've never walked into one of those stadiums.
I have, it is the crowd....atmosphere... not the stadium
If it was just the stadium, than Acrisure is way nicer than 95% of college venues.
Common sense would be a good place for you to start.
Which, I realize, can be a problem.
Counterpoint | Acrisure is the best place for Pitt football to play - The Pitt News
In this “Rental Guide” edition of point-counterpoint, Staff Writer Patrick Diana argues against building an on-campus football stadium.
pittnews.com
“Building an entirely new stadium also comes with a hefty price tag of its own. Acrisure, constructed in 1999, cost about $281 million. With already rising tuition costs, a new stadium will place a bigger weight on students’ pockets.”
No money, no place to put it…. When you asked the poster how much are you going to contribute to a new stadium, we hear crickets….
However, we already know the answer…. ZIP, NADA, NOTHING….
People seem to not remember how completely awful Pitt's athletic fundraising was back then.
For as bad as it is today (relatively speaking), it was orders of magnitude worse back then.
That erector set in State College is a model of a crappy stadium with a great atmosphere.
Put just a tenth of the half a billion that it would take to build a new stadium in Pittsburgh and put it into NIL...then you have a much better shot at a natty.
Heck, put that 1/2 billion into an endowment for Alliance 412, and you'd be churning out natty level NIL payments every year.
College players are professionals now. Bells and whistles mean a lot less now than straight up $$.
You want a project to get behind that might really make a difference, start an endowed NIL fund.
Heck, put that 1/2 billion into an endowment for Alliance 412, and you'd be churning out natty level NIL payments every year.
College players are professionals now. Bells and whistles mean a lot less now than straight up $$.
You want a project to get behind that might really make a difference, start an endowed NIL fund.
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