I wonder if those same arguments were raised before BYU expanded the stadium to its current capacity.

Not gonna happen anytime soon...and it shouldn't. The Marriott Center should be redone before any expansion is considered at LES. The Marriott Center was build ages ago for people that must have been 4'9"...the lack of legroom is ridiculous. I know there have been discussion about redoing/increases seats and taking out some of the benches. Press and VIP sections could be added as well. I would rather have a MC with fewer seats filled to capacity than a top 5 facility in terms of # of seats that had huge empty sections at every home game each year...except 1.

The fact of the matter remains, whenever BYU has had winning teams, the stadium sells out. Shoot, even during the Crowton years they still were above 85% capacity. With the Valley filling up and the team on the rise, you can expect to have lots more demand for tickets both at home and away. Just look at what has happened the last two years... HUGE turnouts at all three bowl games. More BYU fans than home team fans in Ft. Worth, Las Vegas, and possibly even San Diego? We sold out all the home games last year. All of them. Do you really expect that trend to not continue? Now is the time to start making it happen. Whether they do it after the '08 season or the '09 season, they need to start doing something soon, and let the public know about it soon too to get them excited and further promote the program. Fan interest in the program has never been higher.

My vote is for an upper deck on the east side over a full bowl. Why add 15,000 mediocre seats when you could add 15,000 good seats?

treck wrote:

Not gonna happen anytime soon...and it shouldn't. The Marriott Center should be redone before any expansion is considered at LES. The Marriott Center was build ages ago for people that must have been 4'9"...the lack of legroom is ridiculous. I know there have been discussion about redoing/increases seats and taking out some of the benches. Press and VIP sections could be added as well. I would rather have a MC with fewer seats filled to capacity than a top 5 facility in terms of # of seats that had huge empty sections at every home game each year...except 1.

The Marriott Center definitely needs an update. My biggest gripe right now is that the lower bowl student section keeps shrinking. If they redo the seats, I think they should make student sections for the first 5 to 10 rows on three sides of the court. To make up for the loss in lower level seat revenue, they could raise the price on the lower seats on the one remaining side (scarcity) and also build some luxury boxes at midbowl. They could even have a two-tier student ticket pricing system--guaranteed student seats in the lower level for $$ and general admission in the upper bowl for $.

That same argument could be used to 'not' build a stadium...yet. If fan level is high and getting higher, having a limited number of seats would create and elevated demand for seats and we might actually have 'full' stadiums as opposed to 'sold out' games with several thousand empty seats. I don't oppose a stadium expansion, but there is certainly no rush.

gmj81 wrote:

We sold out all the home games last year. All of them. Do you really expect that trend to not continue? Now is the time to start making it happen. Whether they do it after the '08 season or the '09 season, they need to start doing something soon, and let the public know about it soon too to get them excited and further promote the program. Fan interest in the program has never been higher.

It's good that football attendance has finally recovered, but I think expansion talk is a little premature. BYU has really only had one year (2007) of averaging a sell out in the last 5, maybe 10, years.

It's amazing to me that even in 2006 (11-2, #15) BYU still only averaged 60,542 a game. Even without the benefit of hindsight, that's unacceptable. During 1986 and 1987, two of the relative down years in the 1980s, BYU averaged 64,232 and 65,223 respectively. If BYU can pull off a couple more years of sell-outs, then expansion will be justified.