JMU Football Stadium Upgrade....

[JustinG]

Pretty Cool i Think, just curious of the timeline. They are doing this to go D1A

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[Sijray21]

that would be really cool

i know it'll take a while for everything to be funded and built, but that'll be an awesome site if it ever comes to fruition!

[HAULN-SS]

wow, makes me want to go back to JMU even more whne that's finished

[REED]

yeah - I'm really excited to see this take place. I believe you need 40K to be eligible for 1-A and this stadium (in it's final version) should seat around 65K. I want to know how much one of those suites is going to cost

[CaptainHenreh]

Increased tuition ftw?

[ViPER1313]

An I the only one who thinks that the money schools spend on athletics programs could be better spent in other areas? Professors and lowered tuition rates might be good places to start.

[Kaan]

funding the MM F1 team!

[white_2kgt]

An I the only one who thinks that the money schools spend on athletics programs could be better spent in other areas? Professors and lowered tuition rates might be good places to start.

you seem to miss the point that these kinds of teams brings money INTO the school FOR lower tuition rates and higher prof pay.

[Hunter]

An I the only one who thinks that the money schools spend on athletics programs could be better spent in other areas? Professors and lowered tuition rates might be good places to start.

you seem to miss the point that these kinds of teams brings money INTO the school FOR lower tuition rates and higher prof pay.

And the vast majority of the spending on the football stadium will come from the state and private donations. The increase the money raised from student fees is fairly insignificant in terms of stadium funding and those fees increase every year anyway, which is not all because of the football stadium.

[ViPER1313]

Money In :

-Increased student registration (JMU is already becoming overcrowded - had to reopen Rockingham, lots of triples, hard to get an apartment in desirable location, road infrastructure/parking cant cope with demand at current levels.) To reap the benefits of this one the school would have to expand in many other ways.
-Ticket sales to major games
-Merchandise sales
-Food sales at games
-Advertising? (IDK about this one)
-Awards for athletes turned pro?? (Doubt it)

Money Out:
-Scholarships to players
-Cost of team insurance
-Cost of new facility / facility maintenance
-Coaching staff salaries
-Equipment costs
-Costs of shipping teams around during the season

I would like to see the financial projections, but I doubt a stadium that large at JMU could turn any sort of a profit in the foreseeable future.

[HAULN-SS]

I think they are going about this the wrong way - but it will eventually turn a profit. If they had built infrastructure first it would be a lot better. This is going to lead to good things though - west coast recognition, an engineering school, etc etc etc

[Evan]

I have to agree with Adam.
There is certainly a large amount of risk involved with this move. Its not a "if you build it they will come" kind of thing.
When I was there we didnt even fill up the shitty small stadium. jmu students are more passionate about the kind of beer in the kegs at their parties than jmu athletics.
Just having 65k seats doesnt mean they will be filled, and just being D1A doesnt mean we are going to be any good.
There is potential for it to pay for itself many many years down the line, but its going to be a while, if at all.

but yeah, the state is paying for the stadium. Which IMO is even shittier.

[Goodspeed]

What a waste of resources, no matter where its coming from. That will be such an overpowering eye-sore. With this, the new science library, etc, JMU will lose pretty much all of its "small college" charm. Our parking is horrific and student housing is bursting at the seams and yet, this is what they think we need.

Oh well, at least we got our football stadium clean-up in before this monstrosity :roll:

[Apoc]

Our parking is horrific and student housing is bursting at the seams and yet, this is what they think we need.

Unfortunately, that's never what school administrators care about... just what makes them more of a "real" school. I went to a pretty small college, ~2000 students, and they spent an assload of cash on anything but housing and parking despite both being a large problem.

[Feersty]

I think it is for marketing as well. We want to be the next University of South Florida. I wonder if they are banking on Northern Virginia money to pay for tickets, suites, club level?

[Jake]

I'm with Goodspeed. We need to fix the parking problem and the housing problem before adding 20,000ish seats to the football stadium. I understand the fact that JMU wants to grow and become more well-known, but some people chose the school for reasons such as size... not too big where you don't know anyone, but not so small that you know everyone. It's going to lose the appeal in that regard.

[JustinG]

the bigger the school gets the more our degree is worth

[CaptainHenreh]

the bigger the school gets the more our degree is worth

HA! That's funny.

[JustinG]

the bigger the school gets the more our degree is worth

HA! That's funny.

its true in some respect, in state our degree is worth the same amount as the bigger instate schools. Go out of state and no one has heard of us. the Bigger our school gets the better our name gets out, giving our degree pull in states other than VA.

[Apoc]

size != prestige

# of Undergraduate Students
University of Illinois - 30k
Harvard University - 7k

People may eventually have heard of your school but that doesn't mean they're automatically going to respect it.