On my way home from KY through VA I drove through the campus of Liberty U. and looked at the new construction on their football stadium. It looks really small but is supposed to be 30,000 now.

I'm having a hard time gaining perspective on stadiums size and seating capacity. How many would Papa John's Cardinal Stadium hold if it were bleacher seats rather than all chair backs? I assume the capacity would go way up.

(07-01-2010 03:18 PM)army56mike Wrote:  On my way home from KY through VA I drove through the campus of Liberty U. and looked at the new construction on their football stadium. It looks really small but is supposed to be 30,000 now.

I'm having a hard time gaining perspective on stadiums size and seating capacity. How many would Papa John's Cardinal Stadium hold if it were bleacher seats rather than all chair backs? I assume the capacity would go way up.

Assuming PJCS uses the standard 19 inches of width for chairback seats, you'd probably allocate 18 inches per person in a bleacher setting and gain an extra 2 seats per row. Basically a few thousand throughout the stadium. I know some schools go as small as 12 inches per person often at the 90k+ facilities.

Tennessee uses 21 inch seats for the fat butts down here. It's all the fried food, I guess...

Size doesn't matter Mike.

Liberty's stadium is going from 12,000 to 19,200 in this phase (expanding the home stands). The next step is 23,200 (expanding opposite sideline). Then to 30,000 by enclosing one endzone.

It still looks like they'll be cramming 'em in or there's standing room somewhere that I'm missing to get that stadium to 30,000. This is from a guy in a conference of 30,000 seat stadiums of all different designs. Looking at the #s, they have 6K on each sideline currently, and the addition in the endzone is supposed to add 6.8K to the total, at the same height as the current sidelines. Just doesn't make sense to me.

I was at a meeting at UC a few years back where they said UC's 35K stadium would seat 70K if they used the same width as Michigan Stadium. That blew me away... shows how tight some of these places make things in order to squeeze people in.

I remember during construction of PJCS, the figure of 65K was tossed about if Louisville had opted for bleacher seating instead of actual seats. I have no clue what dimensions were used to come to that figure.

(07-02-2010 07:48 AM)mlb Wrote:  I was at a meeting at UC a few years back where they said UC's 35K stadium would seat 70K if they used the same width as Michigan Stadium. That blew me away... shows how tight some of these places make things in order to squeeze people in.

If Tennessee used the same sized seat as the folks at Michigan, Neyland Stadium would probably hold well over 120,000...

Memphis played Michigan a few years back and it was absolutely ridiculous how tight the seating is. I am an average size guy and I could not move. All of their fans around us laughed and said welcome to the Big House. The chair backs in Papa Johns are really nice, makes it really first class.

Will we ever see a 150,000 to 200,000 seat stadium for college football? Rumors are that Auburn is looking at an expansion plan to boost their stadium to 135,000 within the next 25 years to rival Alabama's stadium additions.

One rumor the last few years was that Bristol Motor Speedway wanted to set up a Tennessee-Virginia Tech game at their factility but it never came to fruition. Their venue seats approximately 160K people.

I know TCU is planning to go all chair back, with the exception of the student section and possibly the endzone when they renovate Amon Carter Stadium. Capacity will actually go down by a few thousand, but the physical structure will be larger due to the chair back seats.

Why is Liberty going to 30,000? Are they trying to go FBS?

^ football is big in that part of VA. James Madison is also going to expand their stadium to 30,000 plus. Liberty may be trying to push for membership in the SoCon or CAA as well.

Liberty's ultimate goal is to become an FBS program. There is no timetable set, but that is the ultimate goal. Part of their vision was to be the flagship school for protestant Christians, much like Notre Shame is to Catholics and BYU is to Mormons. They have a long way to go. LU needs to build it's fan base and play a tougher schedule. Virginia is like the state of Florida a few years ago. Lots of schools wanting to move up in division. Besides Liberty, I know Old Dominion is making the move to FBS and I think James Madison wants to as well.

Liberty's long term goal is to go FBS. Jerry Falwell wanted Liberty to be the Notre Dame of Evangelical Christianity. I doubt his son has abandoned that vision.