04.29.16
by

Football Stadium Protesters Misguided

 

How cool would it be for one of these to show up at the next protest?

There aren’t many great sports fantasies left out there but, if I had one, the next time the Stadium Stompers had a rally against the proposed new stadium at Temple, a wicked dust devil would descend upon the crowd and all of the “No New Stadium” signs would be blown away.

In the above video, you can see a cow mascot pretty much oblivious to everything. I do not know if the Stadium Stompers have a mascot, but I would suggest a horse’s ass because that’s how oblivious they have been to the facts surrounding the stadium.

more

From the FAQ section of the Stadium  Stompers’ website. Since the new stadium “takes over” only Geasey Field, which Temple has had for the past 40 years, the word “more” is invalid. Wonder where these people were when Temple built the SAC, Morgan Hall and the Library? All are similarly inside campus-owned property.

Facts are pesky things and they often get in the way of emotions, but the stompers do not have much off a point.  They seem to have two main objections to the stadium. One is that the university will infringe on lands beyond its campus and another concern is that the money used for a stadium can be used on other projects, like a health clinic.  “No New Stadium” signs are popping all over campus even though polls by both the student newspaper and television station demonstrated overwhelming support for a stadium from the student body as a whole.

nonew

Got to wonder what  their problem is when the stadium will be entirely within the campus. That “students say no” sign is incorrect. Every single survey of students show widespread support of a new stadium.

When those two points are easily debunked—the land for a stadium exists entirely on the site of a turf complex, Geasey Field, all entirely inside the campus—the protesters do not want to hear it. Since the money for the stadium will be entirely raised by private donations from stadium supporters, that objection is also unfounded.  Imagine Temple fund-raisers going to deep-pocketed donors and saying, “Sorry, change of plans. You know that $15 million donation you gave to a stadium? Can we use that for a health clinic instead?” Phones would be hanging up all over the Philadelphia area. It’s not an either/or proposition; the money will go to a stadium or there would be no money. At least that’s the way things are supposed to work in a free marketplace. Big donors will give big money to projects they support and, generally speaking, it is easier to raise money for a stadium than a health clinic.

When Temple head coach Matt Rhule was wooed by Missouri at the end of last year, the university convinced him to stay with a hefty pay raise and a commitment to “improved facilities” and that meant a stadium.  The new contract did not say anything about improved facilities unless a lot of protesters objected.

This is what Temple will have to deal with until a stadium is built and probably beyond, but while protesters might have an issue they feel is worthwhile, sometimes a little research would save both shoe leather and needless stress.

Sunday: Draft Aftermath For Temple

32 thoughts on “Football Stadium Protesters Misguided”

  1. Inevitability, however, doesn’t make something the right way to go. While I do think all your points are valid, I also feel that all money should come from donations/gifts/sponsorships – no increases for students or from taxpayers. Ramming projects through that infringe on people who may not even be interested (taxpayers) has been the standard for most stadium projects, professional and collegiate. And if that many students are truly in favor of it then why not build it with more seating than 35K. They should fill it up shouldn’t they? But I doubt even a majority of all students will go to the games even with the convenience of being right there I doubt almost all resident students would go to the games, and Temple is still mostly a commuter school. If they can start with a 40-45K seat facility and fill it up most of the time, then it will be a good business deal and be worth it. No one can guarantee that however. I would hate to see a 35K stadium be half empty after all the effort and end up with a MAC type situation – small but very nice stadium with mostly empty seats on game day. It would be embarrassing.

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    • the tax payer money here was already being spent lining the pockets of jeff lurie. Instead of continuing as is the AD would rather not give lurie anymore money. They are building a stadium with the money appropriated for rent and with donor funds to cover the construction costs.

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      • yes. sorry your comment did not immediately appear, Matt. when you changed the screen name from matt to trashed, the automatic comment enabler doesn’t seem to recognize it and it comes up as a “pending approval” comment. system glitch, I guess.

    • I’d like us to stay at the Linc because I think it enhances our P5 aspirations (and that should be the only aspiration of the Temple athletic department) but if they do first-class stadium like Houston, I’m for it. If they do a half-assed stadium like Tulane, I’m against it. Somewhat in between like FAU would be debatable. Still, the objections of these protesters are absurd. First, no tuition increases will come of this; no taxpayer money (other than switching the Linc rent to new stadium) will be used. The formula is simple: donations plus projected Linc rent will be used.

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  3. These protestors are nothing but angry anarchists, pay them no mind.

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  4. I am not against the stadium for any of these reasons. I am against it because there is absolutely no way the roads can handle the traffic for it. Have you ever sat on Broad Street one of the times the Liacouras Center was sold out? The LC doesn’t hold anywhere close to 35,000 people. It’s going to be a traffic nightmare that will, unfortunately, keep people from wanting to attend the games.

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    • that’s an issue that occurs at basketball games, too. the other side of the coin is that there is a regional rail element at Temple that doesn’t exist at the Linc that can account for thousands of gameday fans in addition to the BSL; also,there are 12,500 students already on campus who will not need transportation. I don’t see it any worse than a packed hoops game is now with those other elements in play. actually, the fact that these games are largely on Saturdays (when the daily parking lots are empty) makes it less of a hassle than the typical night time basketball game. I plan to get on the train in Fox Chase, get off 20 minutes later, and make a leisurely stroll to the alumni tailgates along Dan Pollett Walk and stopping to say hi to the students at their tailgates at the Bell Tower and Liacouras Walk.

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      • Liacouras Center holds 10,000 people. Take out the students and people who take the train (some do to the basketball games to avoid the parking nightmare!) and it is still ugly as hell getting to those games. I go super early to the big games just to try to avoid it, and even then it’s hard. The students were bussed down the road to the Linc and a whole ton of them still couldn’t make the trip. I’m not expecting 1/3 of the stadium to be students, not by a long shot. Some people took the train to the Linc…probably about as many as will take it to a campus stadium. It’s going to be a nightmare. I come from South Jersey. I figure if I have to start going to games on campus instead of the Linc, I’m probably looking at an hour plus added on to my trip to the game, and that’s for a nobody game, just because of traffic getting there. Doesn’t make me real thrilled to go anymore.

      • as far as the traffic nightmare, I know of about zero people who get to football games like hoop games, right on time; football games are an event where most of the crowd is staggered. I get there 3 hours before the game; other friends get there 5 hours before the game and still others come an hour before or an hour after. Leaving for home, I play it by ear. If we win, I stay for a couple of hours to savor. If we lose, I drown my sorrows in a consolation pretzel and get out of there as soon as possible. I see traffic only as a problem on the days we lose. Others, though, have different approaches and deadlines.

    • Yeah, six times a year there may be real heavy traffic around the campus on a Saturday. How come nobody complains when 50 agitators stand in the middle of north broad street and blocked the street like I observed during Cherry & White day and messed up traffic because they want to bellyache for whatever cause they are unhappy about?

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      • good point

      • I don’t give a crap about the teaffic around the campus. If they want to create it, fine. I’m just saying that it doesn’t make for a fun experience when you go to a game and it takes you an hour to go 2.5 miles just to park at it. I get in to the games at the Linc in 30 minutes. I know it will be more like 1.5 hours at least for me to get on campus for a game, given my experience with basketball games. That’ll be so much fun, I can hardly wait. Pretty sure the season tickets won’t get used and I’ll be watching the games on TV. That’s all I was saying. Fans are going to get pretty aggravated with it pretty fast, and we can’t be giving reasons for people not to want to come to games. It defeats the whole reason for the stadium.

      • I don’t think this is going to get built without being held up in the courts for 5-6 years. Heck, the City Council might shoot it down like they shot down the Chinatown baseball stadium and this whole discussion could be a moot point. Still, it would be nice for Temple to have what Rutgers, Maryland and Penn State have–an on-campus stadium.

      • Pam-You say you don’t give a crap about traffic but then you spend the next several sentences complaining about how long it will take you to get to the game. The cost of renting the Linc will be $15M upfront and $2M per year moving forward. The university gets no money from concessions and no parking and the optics of 30k in a 66k seat stadium is terrible. In addition, the University is looking to drive people back to campus, pay for parking, concessions and, frequent the restaurants and bars on campus…….You know make it a real game day experience for the 6 games a year they play at home.

      • Oh, okay. Well, since you put it that way then, that totally makes It all worth my time to sit for an hour plus to drive two miles down the street. That won’t be aggravating at all now, thanks. I am well aware of all those facts you pointed out, as I’ve been following this whole thing from day one. Still doesn’t change the fact that all of the fans who go into the games, except for the 3000 or so students, will be dealing with a traffic nightmare on game day. If you think that fans are going to say it doesn’t bother them because it’s better financially for the university, you’re wrong. What it will do is keep fans away. When I said I don’t care about the traffic, what I meant was, my concern isn’t that six days a year the traffic in the area is going to be bad…which, if it is true that they will rent it out and use it for more than just games, it will be more than six times a year, but whatever…my concern is the fans that are trying to actually GET to the games. I have literally heard people say they don’t go to basketball games because getting to the Liacouras Center and parking is such a nightmare. That will be considered a walk in the park compared to going to a full football game! If the idea is to bring people back to campus, having them sit in traffic for hours because the streets can’t handle that kind of volume, isn’t the way to go about doing it…that will drive them away very quickly…probably the very first season.

      • I don’t agree with your assessment that people won’t go because of traffic concerns. The only reason people won’t go is if the team stinks. That’s no different than today with Temple playing at the Linc. By the way I am a basketball season ticketholder (since it opened) and live in South Jersey and I am able to get to the games in 30-40 minutes. Even the sold out ones.

      • So we will agree to disagree on this one. Although I do agree that if the team stinks people won’t go either. I’ve had season tickets for basketball for 16 years. (Yes, I remember when we used to have a good team…and a good coach and lots and lots of sell outs!) There’s absolutely no way you get to a sold out game in 30-40 minutes unless you’re getting there an hour or two before the game starts or after tip off. No way.

    • Really? don’t build a stadium bcuz the traffic is gonna be bad? small minded thinking. we can put a man on the moon but can’t make a plan to handle traffic?

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      • Since you are going to throw around such over used labels as “small minded thinking” I’m going to call you on this one and say you need to look in a mirror. You don’t know jack of what you talk about. You can’t just say “we can put a man on the moon but can’t make a plan?” I am an engineer and part owner of a company that does traffic studies. I actually know what I’m talking about. That area has no room to expand the roads, so the only place to go is up. You want to add another billion dollars to do that? (It will be much more than that, but your simplistic mind won’t be able to compute all that, so I’ll keep it simple). Perhaps you should focus on getting to the moon.

  5. I imagine typical car tailgating could be at the 5 lots circled:

    tailgating lots

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  6. An aside: why are so many things named after Liacouras on campus. He got a lot done at Temple but so did other Presidents. He was just an administrator and presidents come and go all the time. Unless he gave a lot of money for these projects, I just don’t get it.

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    • I’ve been saying that for years. Liacouras should be taken off the basketball arena and naming rights sold for that arena (the best in the aac) so we can have a nice video board in the new football stadium. Rights for the football stadium should give us nice Linc-type seats (and not benches). Name the stadium Xfinity Stadium and the hoops’ arena Wawa Shortie Hoagie Arena. $20 million for football stadium rights, $15 million for hoops rights. add that on to the $126 we already have and we have a stadium Tulane and FAU would be envious of … 🙂

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  7. Mike, are you saying they already have $126 million in hand? Last I read they had only $25 mil or so pledged.

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    • No,I’m saying the uni Board of Trustees already approved $126 million. I assume that’s for an FAU-type stadium (benches, not seats, modest scoreboard). To make it nicer, need some corporate donations. Did not approve a post from a clown this morning who said no corporate donators are interested. If Maryland can get Comcast to put its name on a stadium, Philadelphia–the home of Comcast–would be interested in naming rights in its hometown. If not Comcast, then Wawa. Naming opportunities do not come along every day. The Comcast CEO makes $41 million a year, a $17 million a year pay raise from previous CEO. In that same time period, my cable bill went from $36 a month to $178 a month for basically the same bare bones package. I think the 1 percent who take from the 99 percent have the scratch for naming rights.

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  8. The traffic complaint is a red herring. People can park anywhere within walking distance of the subway be it the Girard, Fairmount, or Spring Garden stations. People wait in traffic for an hour or more after packed Eagles and Phillies games all the time without the whining expressed here. Go to a PSU or Michigan game and tell me that traffic isn’t a problem and I’ll call you a liar.I don’t care what the event is-if its sold out there will be traffic. And as far as the couple dozen protesters go, they would complain even if TU was building a monument to lefties. That’s what these idiot kids do today. they protest just to protest.

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  9. I’ll be taking the train there for the most part, so parking and traffic isn’t a concern.

    What will be a problem is ESPN and their flipping games to weeknights. It will be the mess feared then for those games. And the later kickoff times will keep me from attending. I realize that’s usually (hopefully) only once a season.

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    • I missed only 1 Temple home game in the last 38 years and that was because I could not get out of work or convince anyone to trade the day with me. I will be going whether it’s at the Linc or the new Saturday Night Live Wawa Shortie Hoagie Dollar General Chickie and Pete’s Stadium or at the Linc. If it’s at Franklin Field or Chester, though,I’m out.

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  10. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jeffrey Lurie is behind/funding the protests through a surrogate. He’s the only loser if a stadium is built. He’s a big loser already.

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  11. The board approving 125 million for the project and actually getting that total amount are 2 different things. What if they come up short (by millions), and are hell bent to build, would they revert to dipping into other sources they are now pledging not to use? But I guess 100 million from comcast isn’t out of the question – y’know, about 1 days worth of their earnings?

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    • when they approve the total, they make it happen. there has not been a single instance in Temple history of the BOT approving a major project then canceling it because of lack of identifiable funding. Now it might be canceled because the city tells them they won’t close 15th Street or the Council doesn’t get enough votes. That’s a whole other story.

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