BATON ROUGE - Tiger Stadium (92,400)

[www.sercan.de]

LSU Tigers

College
4x Champion:
1908, 1958, 2003, 2007

opened 1924 and renovated 2005

image hosted on flickr


image hosted on flickr


image hosted on flickr


image hosted on flickr


image hosted on flickr

[Irish Blood English Heart]

Another huge stadium in american college sports.

[en1044]

loudest stadium in college football

[Indiana Jones]

The crowd once registered on a nearby seismograph.

http://www.lsu.edu/highlights/033/football.html

[Walbanger]

Love it, nice to see a steeper lower bowl, that must get pretty rowdy.
Love the goal posts, are they a refference to the posts of old, like Rugby?

[en1044]

Originally Posted by Walbanger

Love it, nice to see a steeper lower bowl, that must get pretty rowdy.
Love the goal posts, are they a refference to the posts of old, like Rugby?

yeah, and i believe only four colleges still use that style, but im not positive

[danny1010]

yeah, and i believe only four colleges still use that style, but im not positive

The only one besides LSU, I can think off is Florida State. I'm not sure the story behind LSU's, but I know for Florida State that it was a good luck tradition for the team to run under the old H shaped goalposts when entering the stadium, so FSU petitioned the NCAA to allow them to have the modern double uprights.

Someone once told me that LSU had the double uprights because it was much harder for the students to tear down, but I have a feeling that's more of a urban legend.

[Walbanger]

Thats quality. Do student often pull posts down?
The only time I remember that happening in Australian Football was a game at Waverly Park in the late 90's (between Essedon and St Kilda) where a car accident near the ground caused the floor lights to go out and the game was abandoned. The fans being pissed off ripped up benches, chairs and the goal posts and had a bonfire in the middle of the oval.

[MRichR]

It doesn't happen every week, but enough to where they now have specially designed "break-away" goal posts. Either that or they design them so that it's virtually impossible to tear them down. There have been a few instances of bad injuries, and resulting lawsuits, so schools are much more careful about such stuff now.

[dande]

They call it "death valley"?

[en1044]

Originally Posted by dande

They call it "death valley"?

yup...because it gets so loud. they call it the same thing at Clemson University also

[MRichR]

Also referred to as "deaf valley"

[swerve3030]

Just an amazing landmark when your driving over the Mississippi bridge going into Baton Rouge.

[lorevi]

What about capacity if the upper deck will be complete?

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[en1044]

Originally Posted by lorevi

What about capacity if the upper deck will be complete?

[/

easily over 100k, maybe 110k??

[Carrerra]

I don't understand why Americans fail to show in American football stadiums the aesthetics that they show in baseball park. Nearly all of American football stadiums are mere concrete monsters to me with the exception of few recently built. No offense but seriously they remind me of American junk food not sporting venue. They are all just big, big, big, big, big, big, big and that's all I feel. There is nothing more than that in American football stadiums. Nothing impressive and nothing aesthetic ever indeed! Where were your architects in building those stadiums? Did they construct the stadiums without architects to save designing cost? Beyond being not understandable, they are even a mistery to me.

[wizziko]

Originally Posted by danny1010

Someone once told me that LSU had the double uprights because it was much harder for the students to tear down, but I have a feeling that's more of a urban legend.

I don't think thats true but I don't have an answer for it either

Originally Posted by MRichR

Also referred to as "deaf valley"

yea thats what it was originally but people mistook it for "death valley" and that stuck

Originally Posted by lorevi

What about capacity if the upper deck will be complete?

here is a pic I got from a poster on TigerDroppings.com of the enclosed upper deck. I would say the capacity in this pic is about 115,000.



For the 2009 season, they will add a new scoreboard to the North endzone. There are plans to add onto the south endzone but as of now they are only talking about adding more suites.

[danny1010]

I assume you're talking mainly about these college football stadiums, since most of the recent NFL stadia do pay quite a bit of attention to asthetics.

You have to look at when many of these stadiums were built. It's not like these asthetically attractive and contemporary designs were being built in the 1900-1940 era anywhere else in world. College football embraces tradition more dearly than most other sports and this also translates into their stadia.

Universities rarely build a new stadium to replace an old one. They expand and renovate the existing stadium to hold onto the traditions and history that was built there. Also in doing so, these expansions try to maintain the architecture from the original structure instead of creating something that would look disjointed.

Of course, this process reduces the chance of something groundbreaking, but most college football fans would prefer to hang on to the history that they are so proud of. It's the most recent construction (whether new or a renovation) where you're seeing a impressive fascades and a greater focus on aesthetics.

You've also got to remember these are non-profit organizations... universities... schools of higher education. It's not their mission to build the prettiest stadiums.

[en1044]

Originally Posted by Carrerra

I don't understand why Americans fail to show in American football stadiums the aesthetics that they show in baseball park. Nearly all of American football stadiums are mere concrete monsters to me with the exception of few recently built. No offense but seriously they remind me of American junk food not sporting venue. They are all just big, big, big, big, big, big, big and that's all I feel. There is nothing more than that in American football stadiums. Nothing impressive and nothing aesthetic ever indeed! Where were your architects in building those stadiums? Did they construct the stadiums without architects to save designing cost? Beyond being not understandable, they are even a mistery to me.

college stadiums arent built all at once, it took years for the big ones to get where they are now. You build when you can afford it. Asthetics arent important in college, and likely never will be. The point is to fit as many people in as possible, however that may be. Remember, this is not a professional sport, people dont go for the amenities, they go to see the team play and thats it. No one really cares what the stadium looks like. When your goal is to jam a whole bunch of people in, do aesthetics matter?

[salaverryo]

College football is not concerned with the comfort of spectators as pro football is. The stands don't have individual seats, there's hardly any luxury boxes, the stadiums are seldom -if ever- roofed over, etc. The point is, colleges try to build as big a bowl as they can to pack the most people in, like sardines.