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This has been an ongoing debate for years amongst Memphis fans. With Memphis both the Men's BB team and FB team play in city-owned facilities that are off campus. During one of the most recent debates someone asked how many schools moved from an off-campus stadium with a capacity at least 40k to playing on campus. I looked it up and made a thread about it. I'll post it here so you don't have to click the link. Feel free to let me know what I missed or got wrong.

https://csnbbs.com/thread-963903.html

Quote:msu35 posed the question in another thread with a baseline of moving from a 40k stadium. Curiosity got the best of me so I wanted to see how that looked. I originally planned to only go back to 2000 to save time, but then changed to 30 years ago before settling on 1990. Because of this I do not know if there were any schools that made the same move before 1990. I also looked at all sizes instead of just above 40k. I used this Wikipedia page as a quick reference for build dates. The following list only includes schools who built their new stadium on the main campus.



The main thing that stood out to me was that three of the five schools that moved from stadiums over 40k were in the same conference as Memphis at different points. I realized after the fact that I didn't keep a proper track of ownership of the older stadium as I was doing this. But from what I remember Colorado State is the only school in this list that owned the previous off-campus stadium. Most of the schools moved into smaller stadiums. Louisville has since expanded seating past the previous stadium's capacity.

Other Notes
*N. Texas, SMU, Houston, Utah, and Stanford tore down their old OCSs and built new ones. N. Texas built the new one in a different location than the old OCS.
*Georgia State built a new 24,333 capacity stadium after playing in the Georgia Dome. Still off the main campus, but they own the stadium.
*Hawaii is currently playing on campus till the new Aloha Stadium is built.
*Rutgers has a stadium on a satellite campus. The old stadium was torn down and replaced with a new one.
*SDSU bought San Diego Stadium and its property from the city. The stadium was demolished, the land became or became a part of their satellite campus, then a new stadium was built.
*Buffalo built a higher capacity OCS in 1993. The older OCS is in use for other purposes.
*Northwestern owns their stadium located away from the main campus. They have plans to tear down their old 47k stadium and replace it with a 35k stadium.


Also from discussions about the subject since my time joining the message board, I would see other schools getting mentioned that play off campus. I looked a little deeper into their situations, and it seems like the debates are similar to ours.

For example with UCLA this blog post (I found out Northwestern's plan here) from Oct. talked about an OCS. This post has a tweet from Troy Aikman and I've seen other fans saying something similar about wanting an OCS that is at least 30k. However this article talks about the issues UCLA had/have with getting an OCS. One of those is that they have a contract with the Rose Bowl till 2044 with no opt out clause. They also give away free tickets to help fill empty seats. The article says that hasn't been successful.

In all this was pretty interesting to look at.

As I mentioned in this post I noticed that three of the schools that stopped playing in a 40k+ off-campus stadium have been in the same conference as Memphis at different points. Louisville and UCF have both moved up in conference affiliation.

So in the grand scheme of evaluation does it not matter that much? Or should schools like Memphis move mountains to get an OCS done?

(01-29-2023 01:01 AM)Alanda Wrote: [ -> ]So in the grand scheme of evaluation does it not matter that much? Or should schools like Memphis move mountains to get an OCS done?

It doesn't really matter for expansion purposes. Yes, it's easier for your students to go to the game and yes you don't have multiple games with a lot of empty seats but those things don't factor into expansion.

Miami is about the only one that was really hurt by moving stadiums but the Orange Bowl wasn't on campus either.

There are better things to do with the money than spend a billion dollars on a new stadium. Paying athletes (pretty soon) and getting good will get you there a lot quicker.

I don't think it's important. Memphis was likely next in line for the Big 12. Markets, school size and academics play a bigger role.

Honestly, I don’t think it would matter in Memphis’ case. Memphis was just the unlucky one in Big XII expansion where there were 5 viable candidates on the same level but only 4 chairs. 3 of others were in top-5 recruiting states and the 4th was a de facto national team for a religion. It was just bad luck.

Just wanted to add that while I support an OCS, I mainly want one because I want the school to keep as much of the revenue as possible. But some have debated about how an OCS has impacted expansion so I wanted some takes outside of the fanbase. If I had my way and the money I would copy Syracuse and build a smaller version of the Carrier JMA Wireless Dome. That way we could get both of those sports back on campus along with some other possible revenue sources.

(01-29-2023 01:01 AM)Alanda Wrote: [ -> ]This has been an ongoing debate for years amongst Memphis fans. With Memphis both the Men's BB team and FB team play in city-owned facilities that are off campus. During one of the most recent debates someone asked how many schools moved from an off-campus stadium with a capacity at least 40k to playing on campus. I looked it up and made a thread about it. I'll post it here so you don't have to click the link. Feel free to let me know what I missed or got wrong.

https://csnbbs.com/thread-963903.html

Quote:msu35 posed the question in another thread with a baseline of moving from a 40k stadium. Curiosity got the best of me so I wanted to see how that looked. I originally planned to only go back to 2000 to save time, but then changed to 30 years ago before settling on 1990. Because of this I do not know if there were any schools that made the same move before 1990. I also looked at all sizes instead of just above 40k. I used this Wikipedia page as a quick reference for build dates. The following list only includes schools who built their new stadium on the main campus.



The main thing that stood out to me was that three of the five schools that moved from stadiums over 40k were in the same conference as Memphis at different points. I realized after the fact that I didn't keep a proper track of ownership of the older stadium as I was doing this. But from what I remember Colorado State is the only school in this list that owned the previous off-campus stadium. Most of the schools moved into smaller stadiums. Louisville has since expanded seating past the previous stadium's capacity.

Other Notes
*N. Texas, SMU, Houston, Utah, and Stanford tore down their old OCSs and built new ones. N. Texas built the new one in a different location than the old OCS.
*Georgia State built a new 24,333 capacity stadium after playing in the Georgia Dome. Still off the main campus, but they own the stadium.
*Hawaii is currently playing on campus till the new Aloha Stadium is built.
*Rutgers has a stadium on a satellite campus. The old stadium was torn down and replaced with a new one.
*SDSU bought San Diego Stadium and its property from the city. The stadium was demolished, the land became or became a part of their satellite campus, then a new stadium was built.
*Buffalo built a higher capacity OCS in 1993. The older OCS is in use for other purposes.
*Northwestern owns their stadium located away from the main campus. They have plans to tear down their old 47k stadium and replace it with a 35k stadium.


Also from discussions about the subject since my time joining the message board, I would see other schools getting mentioned that play off campus. I looked a little deeper into their situations, and it seems like the debates are similar to ours.

For example with UCLA this blog post (I found out Northwestern's plan here) from Oct. talked about an OCS. This post has a tweet from Troy Aikman and I've seen other fans saying something similar about wanting an OCS that is at least 30k. However this article talks about the issues UCLA had/have with getting an OCS. One of those is that they have a contract with the Rose Bowl till 2044 with no opt out clause. They also give away free tickets to help fill empty seats. The article says that hasn't been successful.

In all this was pretty interesting to look at.

As I mentioned in this post I noticed that three of the schools that stopped playing in a 40k+ off-campus stadium have been in the same conference as Memphis at different points. Louisville and UCF have both moved up in conference affiliation.

So in the grand scheme of evaluation does it not matter that much? Or should schools like Memphis move mountains to get an OCS done?

I think for Memphis whose goal at this point should be aimed for a revamped ACC next decade its critically important to either get a new stadium.

Facilities matter when moving from "lesser leagues " to autonomy leagues.

(01-29-2023 01:13 AM)_C2_ Wrote: [ -> ]I don't think it's important. Memphis was likely next in line for the Big 12. Markets, school size and academics play a bigger role.

I agree that on campus stadium it is one of several factors (market size, academics, recent success, endowment, history and facilities). Smu has a nice on campus stadiium, but is currently building an endzone complex that will add seats, additional suites and on the back side a large building that will house the fooltall operations - $110M. About 4 years ago they added a major indoor practice facility. I do think that your stadium needs to be pushing 40,000 for P5 consideration. Another consideration, especially for schools that might have a stadium that is closer to the 40K number, should be other facilities in the city that could host a major game - for example DFW has the original Cotton Bowl and "Jerry World".

(01-29-2023 01:01 AM)Alanda Wrote: [ -> ]*Georgia State built a new 24,333 capacity stadium after playing in the Georgia Dome. Still off the main campus, but they own the stadium.

Important to note, imho, that Georgia State University did not “build” the stadium but acquired it (it was called Turner Field in those days) after the Braves left for SunTrust Park after the 2016 season. It wasn’t simply given away for free, but GSU paid nothing even remotely close to market value. In the six years since that time, GSU has made various changes and renovations to convert it from an exclusively-baseball configuration to football. I’ve been to about 8 games in that time and enjoyed them all. But there was no real-world scenario in which Georgia State could have bought all that land and built a brand-new stadium to go with it.

Quote:So in the grand scheme of evaluation does it not matter that much? Or should schools like Memphis move mountains to get an OCS done?

Think about the schools who have been admitted to any of the P5 leagues since 1990. Did any of them *Not* have their own OCS? Only ones I can think of are Miami/FL to the ACC (but they had multiple NC’s) and Southern Cal/UCLA to the B1G (but they were already in a P5 league).

(01-29-2023 01:01 AM)Alanda Wrote: [ -> ]This has been an ongoing debate for years amongst Memphis fans. With Memphis both the Men's BB team and FB team play in city-owned facilities that are off campus. During one of the most recent debates someone asked how many schools moved from an off-campus stadium with a capacity at least 40k to playing on campus. I looked it up and made a thread about it. I'll post it here so you don't have to click the link. Feel free to let me know what I missed or got wrong.

https://csnbbs.com/thread-963903.html

Quote:msu35 posed the question in another thread with a baseline of moving from a 40k stadium. Curiosity got the best of me so I wanted to see how that looked. I originally planned to only go back to 2000 to save time, but then changed to 30 years ago before settling on 1990. Because of this I do not know if there were any schools that made the same move before 1990. I also looked at all sizes instead of just above 40k. I used this Wikipedia page as a quick reference for build dates. The following list only includes schools who built their new stadium on the main campus.



The main thing that stood out to me was that three of the five schools that moved from stadiums over 40k were in the same conference as Memphis at different points. I realized after the fact that I didn't keep a proper track of ownership of the older stadium as I was doing this. But from what I remember Colorado State is the only school in this list that owned the previous off-campus stadium. Most of the schools moved into smaller stadiums. Louisville has since expanded seating past the previous stadium's capacity.

Other Notes
*N. Texas, SMU, Houston, Utah, and Stanford tore down their old OCSs and built new ones. N. Texas built the new one in a different location than the old OCS.
*Georgia State built a new 24,333 capacity stadium after playing in the Georgia Dome. Still off the main campus, but they own the stadium.
*Hawaii is currently playing on campus till the new Aloha Stadium is built.
*Rutgers has a stadium on a satellite campus. The old stadium was torn down and replaced with a new one.
*SDSU bought San Diego Stadium and its property from the city. The stadium was demolished, the land became or became a part of their satellite campus, then a new stadium was built.
*Buffalo built a higher capacity OCS in 1993. The older OCS is in use for other purposes.
*Northwestern owns their stadium located away from the main campus. They have plans to tear down their old 47k stadium and replace it with a 35k stadium.


Also from discussions about the subject since my time joining the message board, I would see other schools getting mentioned that play off campus. I looked a little deeper into their situations, and it seems like the debates are similar to ours.

For example with UCLA this blog post (I found out Northwestern's plan here) from Oct. talked about an OCS. This post has a tweet from Troy Aikman and I've seen other fans saying something similar about wanting an OCS that is at least 30k. However this article talks about the issues UCLA had/have with getting an OCS. One of those is that they have a contract with the Rose Bowl till 2044 with no opt out clause. They also give away free tickets to help fill empty seats. The article says that hasn't been successful.

In all this was pretty interesting to look at.

As I mentioned in this post I noticed that three of the schools that stopped playing in a 40k+ off-campus stadium have been in the same conference as Memphis at different points. Louisville and UCF have both moved up in conference affiliation.

So in the grand scheme of evaluation does it not matter that much? Or should schools like Memphis move mountains to get an OCS done?

I’d put it this way: an OCS is not outcome determinative for the P5 invite prospects for Memphis. Sure, it’s a positive attribute to have an OCS stadium. However, that’s not going to be the determining factor and it hasn’t been the major issue for the P5 in its evaluation of Memphis. Instead, it’s the academic rankings of Memphis that are the biggest issue by far. Memphis is #263 in the US News Rankings. The lowest ranked school in the P5 is West Virginia at #234. No one else in the P5 is ranked below 200 and the majority are ranked in the top 100. As long as this is the case for Memphis, it’s going to be an anchor and why the school is seemingly always the third choice when there’s a P5 expansion of 2 schools or fifth choice when there’s a P5 expansion of 4 schools. If USF starts playing well again, for instance, they’re going to get more of the benefit of the doubt with university presidents because of their TV market, recruiting location and higher academic rankings even though they don’t have an OCS.

So, honestly, Memphis would be better served focusing on getting its academic rankings higher if it ever realistically wants to get into a power conference. The main impediment there is that going up the academic rankings is extremely hard compared to getting better at athletics because most academic movements are glacial and also requires schools ahead of you to fall backwards.

The answer to this question is always going to be *it depends*. It depends on what conference a school is trying to join, the timing of that decision, who their competitors are, etc.

In the case of Memphis, based on what I was told when I first covered the Big 12 Expansion Palooza, a lack of a OCS was not on the top five factors that came up. Working against Memphis was their geography, their administration, the *quality* of those facilities, the on-field results, etc. Given how the Big 12's new leadership seems hell bent on getting into the PST, it's hard to really see how a new stadium *now* would move the needle in any meaningful way.

The Big 12's current presidential leadership does not care about US News rankings. This is not a conference that cares about academic unity, profile or brand. If Memphis was trying to join the Big Ten, Pac-12, or, to a lesser extent, the SEC, then yes, that would matter a great deal. They don't even really care that much about TV market size.

All things being equal, its probably better to have an OCS than not, but the decision on where to play is very context and resource dependent. This would probably not be the biggest thing I'd worry about if I was Memphis.

Memphis' best chance for a better conference home, realistically, will be the "least prestigious" all-sports league that is part of the future power/autonomous structure. As such, Memphis should hope the future power structure looks a good bit differently than the current five-conference group. I've posted many times that if (a major "if") we eventually see four large all-sports leagues (18 members or more), some current members of the G5 might have a solid shot at membership in the "fourth league." If the future yields only three power leagues, Memphis' chance is slim.

As to the on-campus stadium, if the Liberty Bowl/Simmons Stadium is upgraded as proposed ... that will be strong. The design suggests an outstanding stadium.

As to academics, the University of Memphis (like West Virginia University) will always be limited, to an extent in that its mission is, largely, to educate public high school graduates in Memphis and West Tennessee. Many of those students are not as academically prepared for college as is ideal. Similarly, getting the UM graduation rate, for example, up to 57 percent from 47 percent won't be easy. Doubling the current UM endowment ($220 million) to almost $500 million — a figure that is is basically the bear-bones minimum level seen by power league members (UCF's endowment, for comparison, is $201 million) — will take years.

At some point, Memphis might be faced with a tough decision — one that will be largely dictated by the desire to keep the Tiger men's basketball program nationally relevant: drop FBS football.

Part of it is probably building on OCS shows that a school is committed to athletics. Like if you're dropping ~100 million in facilities, it's probably a sign that a school wants to compete at the highest level.

(01-29-2023 01:07 AM)ChrisLords Wrote: [ -> ]

(01-29-2023 01:01 AM)Alanda Wrote: [ -> ]So in the grand scheme of evaluation does it not matter that much? Or should schools like Memphis move mountains to get an OCS done?

It doesn't really matter for expansion purposes. Yes, it's easier for your students to go to the game and yes you don't have multiple games with a lot of empty seats but those things don't factor into expansion.

Miami is about the only one that was really hurt by moving stadiums but the Orange Bowl wasn't on campus either.

There are better things to do with the money than spend a billion dollars on a new stadium. Paying athletes (pretty soon) and getting good will get you there a lot quicker.

Agreed. It matters to the schools, but not the conferences.

A little clarification on your list. Georgia State bought Turner Field and the land around it to expand their campus. Their football stadium is the old Braves baseball stadium renovated for football. Most of Georgia State is in downtown Atlanta, about a mile from the football stadium just across the freeway.

Houston played for decades in the Houston Astrodome but left the Dome in 1998. They moved to what was called Jeppesen Stadium and used by the local high schools. It was located on the edge of campus. That stadium was later torn down.

I just mapped it out, the Liberty Bowl is 2.3 miles from the Campus. Yes, it's an ageing facility, but it's more than adequate and the location isn't so much worse than an OCS that you'd want to drop hundreds of millions replacing it with something 2 miles down the road. As others have noted, Memphis' issues are largely unrelated to the Stadium.

(01-29-2023 01:01 AM)Alanda Wrote: [ -> ]....
So in the grand scheme of evaluation does it not matter that much? Or should schools like Memphis move mountains to get an OCS done?

Memphis is in fine shape. The Tigers course of upgrading the Liberty Bowl is not only smart, but surely informed by interviews school reps had with the B12 in 2016.

We tend to discount here the importance of contacts that don't result in immediate invitations. These can be crucial in establishing talks and effecting change.

The UC regents recently had extensive discussions with B1G officials. Cal wasn't offered a bid this time around but you can bet regents took the opportunity to learn what it would take to improve the Bears' position. Watch now how the Bears invest their UCLA 'Caltax'.

Memphis boosts itself by producing exciting highlight clips with the Tigers on the right side of the score. The main thing now is to keep that going.

Schools sometimes have an 'edifice complex': they make too much of building excellent landmarks before landing excellent personnel. USF and Colorado State have made a priority of building stadiums, for example. But who are the coaches? Who are the players? Rising teams better their situations by playing anybody anywhere and making the most of those games.

(01-29-2023 01:44 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote: [ -> ]I just mapped it out, the Liberty Bowl is 2.3 miles from the Campus. Yes, it's an ageing facility, but it's more than adequate and the location isn't so much worse than an OCS that you'd want to drop hundreds of millions replacing it with something 2 miles down the road. As others have noted, Memphis' issues are largely unrelated to the Stadium.

What would an on-campus stadium give Memphis? Would it improve their attendance? More important, would it increase their revenues? If more students were to attend their games, would they sell more tickets or just have more seats filled with no additional revenue and probably a lot of debt service for many years into the future? Spend your money on something else.

The main campuses of Rutgers University are located in the cities of New Brunswick and Piscataway. The original Rutgers Stadium was a Great Depression WPA project built in Piscataway which replaced Neilson Field in New Brunswick; total distance between the sites - maybe 5 miles at most.

After the D1/D1AA split, Rutgers did play two “home” games at Giants Stadium every year to meet the 30,000 stadium capacity requirement that was a former NCAA rule. But Rutgers never had a “satellite “ campus in East Rutherford. When Rutgers Stadium was rebuilt in the early 90’s, we did play our entire season at Giants Stadium.

(01-29-2023 07:51 PM)ken d Wrote: [ -> ]

(01-29-2023 01:44 PM)bryanw1995 Wrote: [ -> ]I just mapped it out, the Liberty Bowl is 2.3 miles from the Campus. Yes, it's an ageing facility, but it's more than adequate and the location isn't so much worse than an OCS that you'd want to drop hundreds of millions replacing it with something 2 miles down the road. As others have noted, Memphis' issues are largely unrelated to the Stadium.

What would an on-campus stadium give Memphis? Would it improve their attendance? More important, would it increase their revenues? If more students were to attend their games, would they sell more tickets or just have more seats filled with no additional revenue and probably a lot of debt service for many years into the future? Spend your money on something else.

I was mostly thinking that 2.3 miles isn't that far for a college kid to walk to a football game, anyway. Places with a real issue are Miami, USC, or UCLA, their average distance from the home stadium is about 20 miles of urban commute, so, what, 30-45 minutes, assuming you even have access to a car or the money to pay for a cab/uber? Every kid at Memphis who wants to go to a home game can get there without issue.

The Coliseum is basically on USC's campus.

(01-29-2023 09:23 AM)Native Georgian Wrote: [ -> ]

(01-29-2023 01:01 AM)Alanda Wrote: [ -> ]*Georgia State built a new 24,333 capacity stadium after playing in the Georgia Dome. Still off the main campus, but they own the stadium.

Important to note, imho, that Georgia State University did not “build” the stadium but acquired it (it was called Turner Field in those days) after the Braves left for SunTrust Park after the 2016 season. It wasn’t simply given away for free, but GSU paid nothing even remotely close to market value. In the six years since that time, GSU has made various changes and renovations to convert it from an exclusively-baseball configuration to football. I’ve been to about 8 games in that time and enjoyed them all. But there was no real-world scenario in which Georgia State could have bought all that land and built a brand-new stadium to go with it.

Quote:So in the grand scheme of evaluation does it not matter that much? Or should schools like Memphis move mountains to get an OCS done?

Think about the schools who have been admitted to any of the P5 leagues since 1990. Did any of them *Not* have their own OCS? Only ones I can think of are Miami/FL to the ACC (but they had multiple NC’s) and Southern Cal/UCLA to the B1G (but they were already in a P5 league).

Actually, there are three teams that meet that description in addition to Miami (FL) in 1990, but you would need to put asterisks by both of them, IMO, for two different reasons:
One is South Florida, who was admitted to the BCS BE, and played in Ray James Stadium (aka Ray Jay) which is definitely not on the USF campus. The reason why you need to put an asterisk by them is because the Big East is not P5 league. Temple which came back after being booted is a similar case to USF, IMO.

Baylor is another example of a team in a BCS/P5 league that did not play in an OCS. , Floyd Casey Stadium was not on campus!! But Baylor no longer plays in off-campus Floyd Casey Stadium, which is why I would put an asterisk by them as well.