Should we have an aqueduct too since the Astros have one and the rangers are copying it?

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TWK said: https://texags.com/forums/8/topics/2820346/5

Arkansas has 8 or 9,000 permanent seats, but the ones down the lines are so bad (they don't angle in down the line, so you face CF) that no one would buy those as season tickets, so you can buy those for individual games. LSU sells bleacher seats as season tickets all the way down the lines.

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dermdoc said: https://texags.com/forums/8/topics/2820346/5

Have you been to Arkansas? Anything past the first and third base lines are horrible. They face toward cf basically. You can not see anything on the infield, the batter, or pitcher. I have been there for every SEC game the Ags have played and it sucks because that is where they always put us. Hell, Vandy does not even have a bathroom, you have to walk about a quarter of a mile to use the bathroom at their fb stadium. And the bleachers at Miss State are the absolute worse. As are the seats where they put us for LSU. All you can see is the outfield.

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The facts are:

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olsen_Field_at_Blue_Bell_Park][/url]

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olsen_Field_at_Blue_Bell_Park

A&M capacity - 6,100

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Arkansas Baum for comparison:

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http://www.arkansasrazorbacks.com/baum-stadium/

Arkansas Capacity - 10,737
Arkansas Average Attendance - 8,335 (third best average in the country)
Max Attendance - Baum Stadium set a new record attendance mark of 12,167 as the Arkansas Razorbacks defeated the Missouri State Bears 3-2 in an NCAA Super Regional game.

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You can argue how bad the view is beyond the infield seating at Baum, but it doesn't seem to dampen the spirit and attendance figures. For SEC games the average attendance typically is "sold out". And the weather can be a lot colder/unpredictable for much of the earlier part of the season. see link posted

Aggie1 said:

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TWK said: https://texags.com/forums/8/topics/2820346/5

Arkansas has 8 or 9,000 permanent seats, but the ones down the lines are so bad (they don't angle in down the line, so you face CF) that no one would buy those as season tickets, so you can buy those for individual games. LSU sells bleacher seats as season tickets all the way down the lines.

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dermdoc said: https://texags.com/forums/8/topics/2820346/5

Have you been to Arkansas? Anything past the first and third base lines are horrible. They face toward cf basically. You can not see anything on the infield, the batter, or pitcher. I have been there for every SEC game the Ags have played and it sucks because that is where they always put us. Hell, Vandy does not even have a bathroom, you have to walk about a quarter of a mile to use the bathroom at their fb stadium. And the bleachers at Miss State are the absolute worse. As are the seats where they put us for LSU. All you can see is the outfield.

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The facts are:

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olsen_Field_at_Blue_Bell_Park][/url]

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olsen_Field_at_Blue_Bell_Park

A&M capacity - 6,100

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Arkansas Baum for comparison:

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http://www.arkansasrazorbacks.com/baum-stadium/

Arkansas Capacity - 10,737
Arkansas Average Attendance - 8,335 (third best average in the country)
Max Attendance - Baum Stadium set a new record attendance mark of 12,167 as the Arkansas Razorbacks defeated the Missouri State Bears 3-2 in an NCAA Super Regional game.

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You can argue how bad the view is beyond the infield seating at Baum, but it doesn't seem to dampen the spirit and attendance figures. For SEC games the average attendance typically is "sold out". And the weather can be a lot colder/unpredictable for much of the earlier part of the season. see link posted

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So basically if you have more seats attendance will be higher no matter how bad the seats are. And I agree with that. I want more seating, I just do not want seating like at Arkansas or Miss State. Respectfully, if you have not been to those places I do not think you realize how bad the views are.

More seats but good seats is my goal. South Carolina, except for a small video board, to me is the best and should be the model we strive for.

And I might add, Arkansas is the "quietest" "big" baseball stadium I have been to. And I think that is related to the configuration.

If your goal is to have the AD build seats that will be available as individual game reserved seats, and not sold as season tickets (which some folks apparently want), then you actually do want them to build crappy seats. Of course, that kind of falls into the "other people's money" category, if you expect the AD to spend money building seats which will not generate enough revenue to pay for their construction.

twk said:

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If your goal is to have the AD build seats that will be available as individual game reserved seats, and not sold as season tickets (which some folks apparently want), then you actually do want them to build crappy seats. Of course, that kind of falls into the "other people's money" category, if you expect the AD to spend money building seats which will not generate enough revenue to pay for their construction.

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And I was trying to be nice. You are exactly right. Basically people want other people to give money to build more seats that will lose money so that they have seats to the select games they want to see. Which is fine. The balancing act comes between money from "other people" vs turning off young grads who are future donors.
I see both sides. The only time I get pissed is when people call out season or club ticket holders who have skin in the game and actually donated. The sense of entitlement that somehow folks who have given nothing should have some say on how those folks use their private property really bothers me.

So i've heard it said that the money has already been raised for the Olsen expansion. If that is true, why do we have to wait until the softball stadium is built? Why can we start in June?

fidoduga said:

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So i've heard it said that the money has already been raised for the Olsen expansion. If that is true, why do we have to wait until the softball stadium is built? Why can we start in June?

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probably using the same construction company and track/softball are up first.

Plus I think softball got bumped once already, so they probably don't want to do that again.

Icecream_Ag said:

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fidoduga said:

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So i've heard it said that the money has already been raised for the Olsen expansion. If that is true, why do we have to wait until the softball stadium is built? Why can we start in June?

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probably using the same construction company and track/softball are up first.

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The project would go out for bid. I could see a concern with a lot of the same trades being used at the same time. With all of the work going on in College Station right now getting enough people no matter the contrator will be an issue to do all of those at once.

Rather than expand physical bleachers or seats, I'd rather see berms be built in left and/or right field. For aesthtics purposes, it would just look better. It would give you overflow seating when needed and it wouldn't look bad when they aren't filled up. I just hate what we saw last year with the TCU series. I'm thinking we could have easily put 10k+ in the stadium for each game if we had overflow seating on berms.

Not sure how much better berms look than empty seats. Have you seen the berms lately? It's mostly dead grass.

If it's kept up well, a berm looks fine. When the grass is thrown by the wayside, it looks worse than empty stadium seats.

Capt. America said:

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If it's kept up well, a berm looks fine. When the grass is thrown by the wayside, it looks worse than empty stadium seats.

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You guys don't think we'd keep up the grass? C'mon now, we know grass when it comes to our AD. Empty seats just look bad.

Honestly, if I'm doing the renovation, I just rip out all of the bleachers in Olsen and convert them to nice, wide seat backs. People will pay a little more to watch a game in comfort. You could then justify selling them for a higher price. This would drop the attendance a bit in the actual concrete stadium but you could do it where you're not losing any revenue. Keep the berms down the foul lines as is for GA. Then add a long berm in LF and a berm in RF for anyone who wants to sit there which I'm guessing would be students most of the time who want to grill/tailgate during the game ala Aggie Alley in the old days.

Anyway, many different ways you could work it to make it badass and for low cost (comparatively speaking to other renovations).

Just my opinion there. I understand scarcity and how all that works, but we can't run into another situation like we did during the Supers last year where we probably could have put 10-15k people into that game, but we didn't have anything close to that for room. Not only that, we're in the SEC now. When teams like LSU and others come to town, they can fill a lot of seats.

RockTXAggie said:

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Capt. America said:

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If it's kept up well, a berm looks fine. When the grass is thrown by the wayside, it looks worse than empty stadium seats.

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You guys don't think we'd keep up the grass? C'mon now, we know grass when it comes to our AD. Empty seats just look bad.

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I'm saying the berms we have right now are mostly dead grass.

It's dormant. It'll green up when we get longer day light and warmer temps

Good to know.

fidoduga said:

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So i've heard it said that the money has already been raised for the Olsen expansion. If that is true, why do we have to wait until the softball stadium is built? Why can we start in June?

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1: Softball has been a part of the master improvement plan for a while.
2: Title IX compliance

Not necessarily in this order....

greenyjoe said:

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Take it for what it's worth, but I'm a current student who just voted for "Expansion of Student seating at Olsen" as my class of '18 gift. That's why I clicked on this thread to see if there's actually any fire to this smoke. Reading it on the ballot was the first I heard of it, although I think it's more than warranted even if I never get to use it.

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Yep! I'm in class of '18 and I voted for the expansion on Olsen Field as the class gift as well!

dermdoc said:

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Dermdeck

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The " DermBerm"!!