http://www.nj.com/rutgersfootball/index...._tick.html

http://maryland.247sports.com/Bolt/New-B...d-38298966

So year one is in the bag and I believe that both athletic departments would say they were successful. I still feel like Rutgers is far more excited about football whereas Maryland had broad based success and reason to be excited in more than one area. What has been particularly impressive for me has been the continued and growing interest in football from an attendance perspective. I expected a slight drop off in terms of season tickets sales because some of the newness has faded, but ticket sales have remained at an elevated level so it got me to thinking about future schedules and potential for stadium expansion.
Future schedules:
1. Every year 2 of 4 of (tOSU, PSU, MSU, or scUM) will be coming to town. 2. Indiana is an important winnable division game
3. The class of 2014 matchup may or may not turn into a rivalry but they certainly have proximity.
4. The fans may not get up as much for B1G west games because of the distance but rest assured that a good portion of the tickets will get sucked up by the visiting teams fans that live on the east coast (except Purdue and Northwestern because they suck and shouldn't be in the conference but I digress).
5. Non-conference is becoming more important in the current era so Rutgers should try to keep local schools such as UConn, Army, and the fruit on the docket while Maryland has a longstanding rivalry with West Virginia and should work to play an annual game against an ACC school from VA or NC.
Stadium Expansion
That makes for a solid home slate year in and year out, and B1G fans travel, and there are a ton of B1G alums in the DMV to NYC corridor, and if Rutgers or Maryland fans don't show up their opponents will, and RU/UMD fans should be more excited if they can sustain some success. (Whew that was a lot of conjunctions and I failed at run-on sentences this time.)

Granted it takes a while to build a football culture at a school. But I think a reasonable target for stadium capacity is 90,000 for Rutgers and 75,000 for Maryland. Whatcha think?

For the love of GOD…NO!!!!!!! I know we have one of the smallest stadiums in the B1G and we did have a huge increase in attendance (thanks to all the fans who visited!) but for please no. Let us get 5 years down the road at least, preferably 10 and then think about it.

Maryland is NOT a football school. I wish it was but it isn't, and that isn't going to change anytime soon. Fans will find something better to do if the Terps aren't good and/or have interesting teams to play. Yes, they play OSU, UM, MSU and PSU but we shouldn't RELY on fans of other teams to help subsidize the cost of the upgrades. When MD last "upgraded", Debbie Yow was in charge and it became a big mess. It was certainly a part of the reason that drove the Terps to seek membership (read FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE) from the Big 10. Now don't get me wrong, I have extremely happy to be here but I strongly believe that this would not be in the best long term interests to do this so soon. I'm not saying don't upgrade ever but the current debt situation needs to be resolved before something happens. Even when it is time I am not sure they could easily jump 20,000 seats. They costs would be pretty steep. Maybe they could do it in 2 phases of 10K seats. I'm just not sure that would be realistic. A jump from 54000 to 75000 is huge. Could be going to 65000 and stopping would be easier to stomach. Ok, that's enough for now.

(07-22-2015 05:23 PM)Big Ron Buckeye Wrote:  http://www.nj.com/rutgersfootball/index...._tick.html

http://maryland.247sports.com/Bolt/New-B...d-38298966

So year one is in the bag and I believe that both athletic departments would say they were successful. I still feel like Rutgers is far more excited about football whereas Maryland had broad based success and reason to be excited in more than one area. What has been particularly impressive for me has been the continued and growing interest in football from an attendance perspective. I expected a slight drop off in terms of season tickets sales because some of the newness has faded, but ticket sales have remained at an elevated level so it got me to thinking about future schedules and potential for stadium expansion.
Future schedules:
1. Every year 2 of 4 of (tOSU, PSU, MSU, or scUM) will be coming to town. 2. Indiana is an important winnable division game
3. The class of 2014 matchup may or may not turn into a rivalry but they certainly have proximity.
4. The fans may not get up as much for B1G west games because of the distance but rest assured that a good portion of the tickets will get sucked up by the visiting teams fans that live on the east coast (except Purdue and Northwestern because they suck and shouldn't be in the conference but I digress).
5. Non-conference is becoming more important in the current era so Rutgers should try to keep local schools such as UConn, Army, and the fruit on the docket while Maryland has a longstanding rivalry with West Virginia and should work to play an annual game against an ACC school from VA or NC.
Stadium Expansion
That makes for a solid home slate year in and year out, and B1G fans travel, and there are a ton of B1G alums in the DMV to NYC corridor, and if Rutgers or Maryland fans don't show up their opponents will, and RU/UMD fans should be more excited if they can sustain some success. (Whew that was a lot of conjunctions and I failed at run-on sentences this time.)

Granted it takes a while to build a football culture at a school. But I think a reasonable target for stadium capacity is 90,000 for Rutgers and 75,000 for Maryland. Whatcha think?

The only time I want to see sucacuse/spit/bc on our schedule is for a bowl game. Once things settle down, I think we will go with an OOC schedule of a P5 school, an academy Army/Navy and a local G5 Temple/UConn. RU stadium is expandable up to the 80k range. The plan was to expand incrementally as demand and $$ allowed.

(07-23-2015 08:56 AM)mikeinsec127 Wrote:  

(07-22-2015 05:23 PM)Big Ron Buckeye Wrote:  http://www.nj.com/rutgersfootball/index...._tick.html

http://maryland.247sports.com/Bolt/New-B...d-38298966

So year one is in the bag and I believe that both athletic departments would say they were successful. I still feel like Rutgers is far more excited about football whereas Maryland had broad based success and reason to be excited in more than one area. What has been particularly impressive for me has been the continued and growing interest in football from an attendance perspective. I expected a slight drop off in terms of season tickets sales because some of the newness has faded, but ticket sales have remained at an elevated level so it got me to thinking about future schedules and potential for stadium expansion.
Future schedules:
1. Every year 2 of 4 of (tOSU, PSU, MSU, or scUM) will be coming to town. 2. Indiana is an important winnable division game
3. The class of 2014 matchup may or may not turn into a rivalry but they certainly have proximity.
4. The fans may not get up as much for B1G west games because of the distance but rest assured that a good portion of the tickets will get sucked up by the visiting teams fans that live on the east coast (except Purdue and Northwestern because they suck and shouldn't be in the conference but I digress).
5. Non-conference is becoming more important in the current era so Rutgers should try to keep local schools such as UConn, Army, and the fruit on the docket while Maryland has a longstanding rivalry with West Virginia and should work to play an annual game against an ACC school from VA or NC.
Stadium Expansion
That makes for a solid home slate year in and year out, and B1G fans travel, and there are a ton of B1G alums in the DMV to NYC corridor, and if Rutgers or Maryland fans don't show up their opponents will, and RU/UMD fans should be more excited if they can sustain some success. (Whew that was a lot of conjunctions and I failed at run-on sentences this time.)

Granted it takes a while to build a football culture at a school. But I think a reasonable target for stadium capacity is 90,000 for Rutgers and 75,000 for Maryland. Whatcha think?

The only time I want to see sucacuse/spit/bc on our schedule is for a bowl game. Once things settle down, I think we will go with an OOC schedule of a P5 school, an academy Army/Navy and a local G5 Temple/UConn. RU stadium is expandable up to the 80k range. The plan was to expand incrementally as demand and $$ allowed.

Agreed for the most part, but I have zero issue with OOC games against Cuse, Pitt, WVU or BC. It doesn't need to be a huge focus perhaps, but I think we should try make those happen at least once in a while, especially WVU.

That being said Rutgers should not expand the stadium right now. It needs to focus on experience improvements (concourse widening and more bathrooms both of which are being addressed, a small north end zone video board) for now. In the original expansion plans the north end zone seats were to be regraded to match the new south end zone, basically we were to end up with 55K (and change) seats rather than the 52,454 in the scaled back plans. My vote would be to address that issue in terms of any expansion in the short-term as I'm sure we can consistently sell the extra 3,000 tickets right away, but not 10K or 20K more.

(07-23-2015 08:56 AM)mikeinsec127 Wrote:  The only time I want to see sucacuse/spit/bc on our schedule is for a bowl game. Once things settle down, I think we will go with an OOC schedule of a P5 school, an academy Army/Navy and a local G5 Temple/UConn. RU stadium is expandable up to the 80k range. The plan was to expand incrementally as demand and $$ allowed.

I'm gonna wholeheartedly disagree with you about playing local rivals. While I'm pulling for Rutgers to turn into a monster out east... truth of the matter is that Rutgers hasn't arrived yet. Playing local rivals gets fans blood boiling and talking trash. If I were a Rutgers fan I'd rather play UConn or the Cuse over Colorado State or New Mexico any day.

(07-23-2015 04:01 PM)Big Ron Buckeye Wrote:  

(07-23-2015 08:56 AM)mikeinsec127 Wrote:  The only time I want to see sucacuse/spit/bc on our schedule is for a bowl game. Once things settle down, I think we will go with an OOC schedule of a P5 school, an academy Army/Navy and a local G5 Temple/UConn. RU stadium is expandable up to the 80k range. The plan was to expand incrementally as demand and $$ allowed.

I'm gonna wholeheartedly disagree with you about playing local rivals. While I'm pulling for Rutgers to turn into a monster out east... truth of the matter is that Rutgers hasn't arrived yet. Playing local rivals gets fans blood boiling and talking trash. If I were a Rutgers fan I'd rather play UConn or the Cuse over Colorado State or New Mexico any day.

Admittedly, the next several years OOCs aren't great. Still, I don't want to see us give the original three BE schools any opportunity to get back into NJ. First, they need to raise their profiles here in order to continue to recruit. Loosing that yearly presence in NJ has hurt them far worse than they will ever admit. Second, they still don't see us worthy enough to be considered rivals. That being said, I have no problem seeing the likes of former and local rivals VT, WV, ville, Cincy, day, UConn, Temple, Army or Navy coming through here. We have plenty of history with these teams and both fan bases would be up for these games. In fact, Army sold its a couple of its "Home Games" against RU to the Yankees, for the exact reason new york's college team Sarah Cuse sold its best OOC games to the Meadowlands. It raises the school's profile in the area and allows for the visiting team to bring a large contingent. daU, VT and Navy are already on future schedules, along with UCLA, so things will be looking up.

(07-23-2015 05:00 PM)mikeinsec127 Wrote:  

(07-23-2015 04:01 PM)Big Ron Buckeye Wrote:  

(07-23-2015 08:56 AM)mikeinsec127 Wrote:  The only time I want to see sucacuse/spit/bc on our schedule is for a bowl game. Once things settle down, I think we will go with an OOC schedule of a P5 school, an academy Army/Navy and a local G5 Temple/UConn. RU stadium is expandable up to the 80k range. The plan was to expand incrementally as demand and $$ allowed.

I'm gonna wholeheartedly disagree with you about playing local rivals. While I'm pulling for Rutgers to turn into a monster out east... truth of the matter is that Rutgers hasn't arrived yet. Playing local rivals gets fans blood boiling and talking trash. If I were a Rutgers fan I'd rather play UConn or the Cuse over Colorado State or New Mexico any day.

Admittedly, the next several years OOCs aren't great. Still, I don't want to see us give the original three BE schools any opportunity to get back into NJ. First, they need to raise their profiles here in order to continue to recruit. Loosing that yearly presence in NJ has hurt them far worse than they will ever admit. Second, they still don't see us worthy enough to be considered rivals. That being said, I have no problem seeing the likes of former and local rivals VT, WV, ville, Cincy, day, UConn, Temple, Army or Navy coming through here. We have plenty of history with these teams and both fan bases would be up for these games. In fact, Army sold its a couple of its "Home Games" against RU to the Yankees, for the exact reason new york's college team Sarah Cuse sold its best OOC games to the Meadowlands. It raises the school's profile in the area and allows for the visiting team to bring a large contingent. daU, VT and Navy are already on future schedules, along with UCLA, so things will be looking up.

I know we have Virginia Tech and Temple on future schedules. I thought I had heard a rumor that the Miami series was to be canceled or moved back.

After this year we have no scheduled (or at least announced) games with either Army or Navy. I'm sure that will change with Army as Army remains independent and both will have slots for each other. Plus, this year marks the 40th meeting between Army and Rutgers. Rutgers is Army's 5th most played opponent overall and 4th most played current FBS opponent (Yale is 4th overall) behind Navy, Air Force and Notre Dame. The schools have played 29 times in the last 36 years or roughly 81% of the time in that period. I wouldn't be surprised to hear this Fall that another 4 or more game extension on the series has been signed.