http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/81/Illini_logo.svg/175px-Illini_logo.svg.png
Illinois Fighting Illini

College
4x Champion:
1914, 1919, 1923, 1927

Renovation at Memorial Stadium at the University of Illinois in Champaign, IL.

Cost $100 million

New capacity 65,143

I didnt see this in another thread, im sorry if it is

pre construction
http://graphics.fansonly.com/photos/schools/ill/galleries/Memorial_Stadium/Stadium6-lg.jpg

http://www.collegegridirons.com/bigten/images/memorialill2007901.jpg

render
http://www.athletics.uiuc.edu/renaissance/images/North_Bowl.jpg

construction photos
http://www.illinoisloyalty.com/i/20080208/illinois-memorial-stadium-construction-5133.jpg

http://www.illinoisloyalty.com/i/20080522/memorial-stadium-renovations-illinois-9416.jpg

http://www.illinoisloyalty.com/i/20080522/memorial-stadium-renovations-illinois-9461.jpg

http://www.illinoisloyalty.com/i/20080522/memorial-stadium-renovations-illinois-9372.jpg

Is there a webcam there at the construction site.

excellent. another ugly US stadium renovation. Take a leaf our of Asia and Europes book. Built something attractive for once.

classy comment from the Aussie...

take a grammar lesson mate...

excellent. another ugly US stadium renovation. Take a leaf our of Asia and Europes book. Built something attractive for once.

It's a school, aaron. S - C - H - O - O - L. Doesn't have to be sparkling or glittery.

That's why they didn't hire you as their consultant. Opposing visions.

classy comment from the Aussie...

take a grammar lesson mate...

i'm not going to defend my grammar.

any comments on the stadium or are you just going to rubbish nationalities?

still do not understand why the college stadiums have such a high capacity

NFL stadiums look IMO bigger but have a lower capacity
just the larger seats at NFL stadiums?

still do not understand why the college stadiums have such a high capacity

NFL stadiums look IMO bigger but have a lower capacity
just the larger seats at NFL stadiums?

Oh, the College Games fill up to overflowing. Not that I go, but

#1 - the tickets are far, far cheaper than NFL Games; enabling whole familes to attend at maybe 1/3rd cost of similar nos. for an NFL Game.

(They keep NFL stadia sort of smallish so that they're easy to fill up; thereby freeing TV to broadcast the pro games; so making big bucks too w/ the telecasts which they can't if it's not a sold-out game. The NFL teams can also charge higher tix prices if there are less to go around. And they're just adding more & more suites because they're easier to administer rather selling a comparable # of individual tix.)

#2 - A lot of alumni still go back to their Univs. for important Games

#3 - the college stadiums are the main arenas for these smaller (100,000+) cities the colleges/univs. are located in. They get rented out for decent $$ for concerts.

But as a building most college stadiums do not look like a 100k or 80k stadium (smaller)
But on the other site many NFl satdiums do not lok like 60-70k stadium (IMO bigger)

But as a building most college stadiums do not look like a 100k or 80k stadium (smaller)
But on the other site many NFl satdiums do not lok like 60-70k stadium (IMO bigger)

It's the seating. Most college stadia (and the Rose Bowl for example) are bleachers. NFL stadia are individual seats.

But is the difference so big?

For example Ohia Stadiium.
A Ohio Stadium with individual seats would have a acapacity of ?
80k?

sercan, I don't know what to tell you. Smaller people at the college stadia? The bigger, fatter Americans at the NFL Games?

I mean I know those bigger, older folks won't be able to climb those steep stands at places like the Aggie Stadium in College Station, Texas.

maybe:lol:
Still a mystery to me :D

It'd be interesting to see a scaled comparison. I remember coming across a site once with scaled pictures for comparison and some stadiums were on it. Not sure about college ones. I remember the Westfalen being dwarfed by Allianze Arena.

This is probably what gives Dortmund their famous atmosphere. I'd be fairly certain the same thing would been seen with College vs NFL for 'supporter density' vs atmosphere. A strong correlation no doubt.

i'm not going to defend my grammar.

any comments on the stadium or are you just going to rubbish nationalities?

Dude,

this is a university stadium renovation. Show me a university in Europe or Asia that even has such a stadium. (and there are literally hundreds of such stadia in the US), let alone one of superior design.

You were the one that brought nationality into the thread, that's why I commented in the first place.

Interesting. I always thought the college stadiums were huge. This to me looks massive.

http://www.the-ozone.net/photos/12713.jpg

Different views I suppose.

As for going from bleachers to fully seated, does anyone have an example? I thought Soldier Field did so, but it was hard to find some numbers. I'll look around.

it all has to do with how much space is allowed in a "seat" on the bleachers. If they made individual chairback seats that were the same size as a bleacher seat they would be very small. Thats probably why the capacities are so high at college, whereas in the NFL you have these nice large seats that take up more room.

I'm not a big fan of the new endzone seating, having seen it in person. It seems like it's set up a little too high and set back a little too far from the field to mesh as well as it should with the rest of the stadium. They could've made it a lot more intimidating.

As for size, well I guess you just have to see them in person to get a true idea of how big they are. College football is all about tradition, and the stadiums are part of that. Rarely will you find a college stadium that's renovated without keeping in tact most of the original. Even Notre Dame, who they expanded from 60,000 to 80,000 a little over ten years ago, didn't tear down the original outside, they just built a completely new second structure surrounding it.

I think the design of the tiers may have a larger impact on the perceived size of these stadiums. In the NFL stadiums, they tend to have smaller tiers but more of them, creating a much more vertical visual effect. For simplicity, most college stadiums use fewer and larger tiers.

For example at Royal Memorial Stadium (College - Texas Longhorns) in Austin, the lower bowl has 75 rows and depending on which section of the upper deck, it can have up to 55 rows there. At Reliant Stadium (NFL - Houston Texans) in Houston with, they have 36, 16, 27 rows in their respective tiers (going from field level up and not counting the luxury suites). This matches when you compare the total number of rows (130 vs 79) to capactiy (92k this year vs. 69k), not to mention Royal-Memorial has seating on 3 sides while Reliant is a complete 4 sided stadium.

Royal-Memorial
http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee94/hornsnguyen/DKR/UT-Nebraska_Panorama_2007.jpg

Reliant Stadium
http://www.stadiumsofnfl.com/afc/reliantmainjs.jpg

In addition, you san see Reliant's steeper angle of seating. I do think seating spacing (bleachers vs. seatbacks) have an effect, but it's smaller. It's this vertical stacking layout and its greater heights that I believe make the professional stadiums seem larger in pictures. When you're there in person, you can definitely feel the difference of having those additional fans.

But is the difference so big?

For example Ohia Stadiium.
A Ohio Stadium with individual seats would have a acapacity of ?
80k?

I remmeber the last time this came up the figure mentioend quite often was 3 fans of benchs would take up the space of 2 modern seats, what that came though though I'm not sure.

I don't know if you're going to be able to come up with a reliable conversion. The thing with bench seating is that the teams/schools can arbitrarily decide to mark off the width of a bench seat.

In the rivalries of college football, the schools are always trying to one-up their rivals, including who has the bigger stadium. There are many stories of teams that re-mark the seat widths so their seating capacity will be larger than their rivals.

This is obvioius when the seating capacity changes over an off-season when no modifications/construction occured. A more subtle method is to do this while a stadium expansion is underway so that the rise in seats is just attributed to the new construction. In either case, some stadiums are notorious for having very narrow seats and feeling like a sardine can while others feel very roomy.

In my past experience, the most narrow bench seating I've sat in is 13" and the most roomy was around 20".

Back to topic....

This is a great upgrade for the Illini program. The old pressbox was built in 1969, and looked out of place up in the massive west balcony. The new suites and clubs will bring money in as well as bring MS into the 21st century.

Now all they need to do is redo the horseshor. Demolish is, bring it closer to the endzone, and make it a double deck. That will make MS one of the loudest stadiums in the B10.

As for the comment about it being a blah stadium, visit it sometime and read the names of all the soldiers the stadium is named for. Take a look back into history. The best college football player in history played here.

Back to topic....

The best college football player in history played here.

That's debatable.

I believe it was voted on by the public and writers. Name anyone better than Grange.

One interesting fact about the stadium is that during construction of the Memorial stadium, a bulldozer sank into the field during heavy rain. It was decided that the expense of removing the bulldozer would have been greater than leaving it buried under the field. It remains there today.

I ran across this thread and just thought I would comment-

There are a few reasons pro stadiums are bigger (in actual size) but have smaller capacities-

1. Most college stadiums have bleacher seats. The average bleacher seat at a collegiate stadium is about 18 inches (approx 45cm). Individual seats found in NFL stadiums are much wider.

2. Most NFL stadiums have a large number of suites and other luxury seat options. These are more common in NFL stadiums primarily because NFL stadiums are typically located in large cities where more people (or corporations) can afford luxury suites and where there is more demand for such a thing. Either way, the large number of suites increases the physical size of the stadium but doesn't increase the capacity much.

3. Many NFL stadiums have roofs- roofs increase the physical size of the structure without increasing capacity.

4. NFL stadiums have much larger concourses and fan features (concessions, etc) while most collegiate stadiums are less focused on these items, at least for the "normal" seats. Larger concourses, etc, take up more room without increasing capacity.

Overall, the college stadiums are not as much focuses on income producing items like suites, large scale concessions, etc. They still exist, but not on the same scale. College games, as mentioned, are typically far cheaper to attend than NFL games and are more focused on the game day experience and fitting as many people into the stadium as possible. (I tend to feel more excitement at college games where the players are students and the fans are students or alumni.) On the other hand, the NFL stadiums are more geared towards fan comforts and profit generating features. Many times those features eat up more space and can cause the NFL stadiums to be bigger in size, but not in capacity.

I ran across this thread and just thought I would comment-

There are a few reasons pro stadiums are bigger (in actual size) but have smaller capacities-

1. Most college stadiums have bleacher seats. The average bleacher seat at a collegiate stadium is about 18 inches (approx 45cm). Individual seats found in NFL stadiums are much wider.

2. Most NFL stadiums have a large number of suites and other luxury seat options. These are more common in NFL stadiums primarily because NFL stadiums are typically located in large cities where more people (or corporations) can afford luxury suites and where there is more demand for such a thing. Either way, the large number of suites increases the physical size of the stadium but doesn't increase the capacity much.

3. Many NFL stadiums have roofs- roofs increase the physical size of the structure without increasing capacity.

4. NFL stadiums have much larger concourses and fan features (concessions, etc) while most collegiate stadiums are less focused on these items, at least for the "normal" seats. Larger concourses, etc, take up more room without increasing capacity.

Overall, the college stadiums are not as much focuses on income producing items like suites, large scale concessions, etc. They still exist, but not on the same scale. College games, as mentioned, are typically far cheaper to attend than NFL games and are more focused on the game day experience and fitting as many people into the stadium as possible. (I tend to feel more excitement at college games where the players are students and the fans are students or alumni.) On the other hand, the NFL stadiums are more geared towards fan comforts and profit generating features. Many times those features eat up more space and can cause the NFL stadiums to be bigger in size, but not in capacity.

Bingo... I just saw this thread today and Baylor Guy has the best collection of reasons why college stadiums have high seating capacity but look smaller to the eye.

There are a lot of differences between the college and pro gameday experience.

This stadiums was finished last year!, it looks great!