RE: Would it be possible to ever get Nippert to 50K?
Back to the question at hand..."Would it be possible to ever get Nippert Stadium to 50k capacity?"
The short answer is "YES...BUT." This was heavily studied some years back (what, maybe 10 now?). YES...Nippert could be basically totally rebuilt to get capacity up to about 50k, BUT the amount of money and effort needed to do it would be prohibitive.
First, you'd basically be destroying Nippert. The things we love about the current stadium would cease to exist. The rebuilt stadium might sit on the land Nippert sits in, but it would--for all intents and purposes--be a different stadium.
Second, as several people have noted, it's not just--or even mainly--about the seats. Parking, traffic flow in and out of the stands, restrooms, etc...all of these basic needs need to be accommodated and accounted in any expansion. And, NO, this is not even about "the stadium experience"; it's fire codes, basic sanitation, etc... The whole "experience" thing would come much later.
Third, it would involve the whole campus. Dieterle is the easy target. But now you have "Varsity Village," the TUC, the Rec Center, and even 5/3 and Marge Schott all hemming Nippert in. You can't "just" rebuild and expand Nippert without impacting the whole of the Campus.
Fourth...well...$$$. Where are you going to get the likely $500+ Million to do what you want to do? (And I'm being conservative here.)
Fifth, there's a real question about the future of college FB. As it sits right now, Nippert is a somewhat flexible option. It suits us where we currently sit in the AAC; it isn't either too large nor too small. IF, God forbid, we find D-1 FBS football outside of the Power Conferences to be untenable in the long term, the current Nippert can be "downsized." If you ever needed to, Reed-Shank could be easily removed to give you a capable stadium for a...smaller...football existence (say at the FCS level). If you gamble on a 50,000 seat stadium and the "Power" dream never comes to pass, you find yourself in the situation UConn finds itself in: how in the world could they ever do FCS at Rentschler? They (UConn) will either "make" FBS independence work or they will have to abandon D1 football. (Or maybe they go the FBS-non scholarship route like Georgetown and play with wooden bleachers on some field on campus...) But until the future is more certain, it would be foolhardy to invest in a massive stadium...even if it could be done.
It may be possible to rebuild/replace the Reed-Shank Pavilion with a different set of stands with a greater seating capacity...but it's not going to ever get you 15k more. Maybe another 2-3k... I dunno.
I also don't think you're ever going to "fill in the notches" again. We have beat that one to death over the past few years. The gains in reconstructing them will never match the expense of doing it. Those seat were and never will be great revenue generators. Just getting a few thousand more people to count will not justify the construction expense...sorry.
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