1. Corndogs - Talked with Aramark again today. The corndog vendor elected to not come this season after the code issues were brought to light. This was their decision. Felt the could make more money elsewhere on weekends (They were at the Balloon Festival this weekend). Aramark decided to go with another type vendor (Dickie's - for a signature Texas item - BBQ) as opposed to looking for another vendor for corndogs that would face the same code issues.
2. M&Ms - I asked about this specifically. In short, their costs had gone up on the M&M bags and they were faced with either raising the price on the bigger bags to $5-6 range or going to the smaller bag. They felt the smaller bag was more palatable to fans than charging $6 for candy.
3. Wireless/Cell Issues - It is a big issue. No one debates that. Cell service in the Park Cities is not great and when you put 35,000 people in Ford, it causes big problems. The main issue is that Ford lacks a DAS (distributed antenna system). When Moody was re-done, that was included in the project. To retrofit Ford, the estimated cost is in excess of $1M. (Wisconsin had to spend $6.2M retrofitting Camp-Randall, as a reference.) So while it's a priority, it's not at the top of our list right now. Things like increased meals and snacks for student-athletes and things of the like are at the top of the list (http://www.smumustangs.com/genrel/090514aab.html) since they directly impact student-athletes. If any of you have an extra $1-2M laying around, I'll make sure we earmark it for the project
.Hope this clears some stuff up and thanks for the feedback. Our goal is to get better each week.
