New Among Carter

[couch 'em]

Had a chance a while back to tour the facility, never posted on it.

All I have to say is "WOW". The seating of course looks impressive with no height restriction, but the club area blows Ford away, not to mention all the premium signage, decoration, detail, etc. Makes Ford look bland. Of course stadiums have changed a lot over 12 years but Ford is officially now obsolete.

[Dutch]

Couch'em is right.

[Digetydog]

Had a chance a while back to tour the facility, never posted on it.

All I have to say is "WOW". The seating of course looks impressive with no height restriction, but the club area blows Ford away, not to mention all the premium signage, decoration, detail, etc. Makes Ford look bland. Of course stadiums have changed a lot over 12 years but Ford is officially now obsolete.

In the late 80's, I went to a game there and came away thinking that it would be scary to sit in the upper deck for fear that it would collapse.

[Digetydog]

Had a chance a while back to tour the facility, never posted on it.

All I have to say is "WOW". The seating of course looks impressive with no height restriction, but the club area blows Ford away, not to mention all the premium signage, decoration, detail, etc. Makes Ford look bland. Of course stadiums have changed a lot over 12 years but Ford is officially now obsolete.

I went to the Uconn/Temple game at Rentchler Field. It was built around the same time as Ford and is roughly the same size.

In terms of amenities (I haven't been in Ford's Suites/Club areas), Rentchler is very bland. In terms of design, it very much reminds me of Plano's John Clark Field (Played/watched a lot of games there back in the day). Lots of concrete, very bland even in the luxury suites.

BUT, the seating layout is significantly better than Ford's.

First, the slope of the seating is significantly steeper bringing people closer to the field (if a little higher) for the same row.

Second,building seats in both EZ's means all the EZ seats are closer to the field. For a while, we left our suite and hung out there for a while - very nice.

While gorgeous, I think Ford's utility is not the best.

[couch 'em]

Had a chance a while back to tour the facility, never posted on it.

All I have to say is "WOW". The seating of course looks impressive with no height restriction, but the club area blows Ford away, not to mention all the premium signage, decoration, detail, etc. Makes Ford look bland. Of course stadiums have changed a lot over 12 years but Ford is officially now obsolete.

I went to the Uconn/Temple game at Rentchler Field. It was built around the same time as Ford and is roughly the same size.

In terms of amenities (I haven't been in Ford's Suites/Club areas), Rentchler is very bland. In terms of design, it very much reminds me of Plano's John Clark Field (Played/watched a lot of games there back in the day). Lots of concrete, very bland even in the luxury suites.

BUT, the seating layout is significantly better than Ford's.

First, the slope of the seating is significantly steeper bringing people closer to the field (if a little higher) for the same row.

Second,building seats in both EZ's means all the EZ seats are closer to the field. For a while, we left our suite and hung out there for a while - very nice.

While gorgeous, I think Ford's utility is not the best.

Watchout - I've made similar observations before and gotten jumped on.

[PK]

Had a chance a while back to tour the facility, never posted on it.

All I have to say is "WOW". The seating of course looks impressive with no height restriction, but the club area blows Ford away, not to mention all the premium signage, decoration, detail, etc. Makes Ford look bland. Of course stadiums have changed a lot over 12 years but Ford is officially now obsolete.

Ford only cost about a third of what Amon Carter cost. Obviously their winning ways brought in a lot more money for the construction of their stadium. Considering where we were in terms of being a winning program (not) when we built Ford, we did well to get the funds we got. Assuming we ever get to where TCU is now in being a successful program maybe the expected (hoped for) expansion will give Ford a bit more WOW factor.

[Digetydog]

Watchout - I've made similar observations before and gotten jumped on.

Ford reminds me very much of the the Yale Bowl, the old parts of ND's stadium, or the Rose Bowl with luxury boxes on top (and modernized). Note - the seating design of all those stadiums is well over 50 and in some cases nearly 100 years old.

For a stadium with Ford's capacity to have so many EZ seats so far from the field is insane. It makes the stadium feel "open" instead of intimate.

Looks like we spent to much designing the outside and very little designing the inside.

[West Coast Johnny]

Ford is a cool stadium. I like the classic bowl shape and I also like the end zone GA area. Sure, amenities are nice, but when you get down to it, a stadium is meant to watch football in. Amenities like luxury suites with buffets and open bars just take away from the football. Talk of expanding Ford now is just silly all things considered.

[Stallion]

Ford Stadium is an outstanding Stadium for a school satisfied with being at a second tier level. Amon Carter was built to compete at the BCS level. Count the sideline seats and multiple by Season Ticket price asnd Amon Carter is financially a huge advantage to TCU. SMU will apparently have to create a Political Action Committee and elect a new City Council to get a variance that would make up the difference

[Oliver]

Ford's bowl style is classic, but loses volume because it is never full. I think they way it was built could have something to do with height restrictions in that area..could be wrong though. Would be neat if it had more of an intimate feel, mainly to keep crowd noise in

[Digetydog]

Ford is a cool stadium. I like the classic bowl shape and I also like the end zone GA area. Sure, amenities are nice, but when you get down to it, a stadium is meant to watch football in. Amenities like luxury suites with buffets and open bars just take away from the football. Talk of expanding Ford now is just silly all things considered.

At Rentchler, I got to sit in a company suite and didn't really care. The problem, from a "regular fan" and revenue perspective is:
1) There are too many seats in the endzone and not enough seats on the sidelines. That is a result of all sweeping "bowl" designs like the Yale Bowl, LA's Coliseaum, and the Rose Bowl. Some of those designs resulted from the need to fit a track inside the stadium.
2) The seats in the endzone are not very good for a modern design. Today, modern stadiums are built more like a rectangle (think Soccer stadiums) with the endzone seats square to the field and as close as possible.

Look at the seating chart for Frog Hollow: It seats 50,000. hthttp://www.physicalplant.tcu.edu/projects_agc_more_images.asp
- Notice how many more sideline seats are available relative to the endzone seats.
- Notice how close the endzone seats are to the field.

Rentchler Field (Uconn) only seats about 40,000. While B-Ugly, most of the seats are on the sidelines and the EZ seats are signficantly closer to the field than at Ford. http://www.rentschlerfield.com/

Plus, if SMU needs to expand to 40K, you know all the "new" seats will be in the South Endzone.