NIU Facilities Upgrades

[BillyLP]

Just read about this in the Trib this morning. $138 million in privately funded upgrades around all of athletics, but the thing that caught my eye was expanding to a 45,000 seat stadium. Don't they have trouble filling their current one even with all of their success? I imagine the long term plan is to leave the MAC for a bigger conference.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/co ... story.html

[jpfalcon09]

I don't think NIU will ever leave the MAC, but they have arranged some very good home and home contracts for the future. Seems like they want to cash in on those games and obviously try to separate themselves for recruiting purposes.

[Dayons_Den]

I doubt they leave the MAC again, their foray in to "big time" football as an independent only saw them come crawling back to the MAC.

In regards to cashing in- in the article the stadium looks to be going from ~24k to ~30k so not a huge jump but if they are really looking to cash in they would keep the capacity lower (increase demand for seats) and increase the suite/hospitality areas (higher priced ticket area). Similar to what is the trend in MLB.

[Redwingtom]

Wow....they're only averaging 14,838 per game this year. Only EMU, Ball State and Akron are below them.

*Caveat, some schools use ticket sales, NIU uses butts in seats.

[Flipper]

...and they're out there in farm country where some of those butts are large enough that they should count as two or possibly three

[Falconian]

Isn't BGSU in farm country?

[Flipper]

We're more of a wind farm, so no...