For fans of the SF Bay Area University of California Football team, they may want to see what’s in store once Memorial Stadium is refurbished. Here is a picture of the place gutted. And the change from funky bench seating to three classes of chair is demonstrated. Personally I thought the old stadium was fine.
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I want the first class chair. How much will I have to cough up for that one?
If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
People forget where class warfare is propagated and supported in doing so the most.
The old bench seating would have been fine if they had ever done any maintenance on it, but in many places it was rotten, split and broken with pieces missing.
bad site design
Personally I thought the old stadium was fine.
You must be joking. I’ve seen HS stadiums bigger and nicer than Cal’s old stadium. Frankly, the old stadium was embarrassing to show on TV for a Div 1 program. If they want to move up with the big boys and say host bowl games, they absolutely needed a new stadium. In addition, how can you really expect people to pay $50-$100 for a seat and sit on bench seats?!
Further, from a fan perspective, bench seats blow. You are pretty much compelled to get a stadium seat to make it tolerable to sit for three hours with no back rest. It is the reason why I hate the Rose Bowl. Great field. Great viewing. Utter horsecrap for seats and doubly worse for the Rose Bowl game itself when they pack-in as many people is possible.
It was laughable that Cal had to wait as long as it did to replace the stadium. Now, the fact that they rebuilt it on the same location which is right on top of a fault line (which caused the old goal posts to be slight off from each other). That’s the real joke.
I’m not going to pay that kind of money to watch a bunch of total strangers who play for pay and don’t actually care anything about me or the community in which I live play.
I’d prefer to watch a bunch of the local school kids have at it. I may have taught them or their parents or even be related to some of the.
@Thomas
Lambeau Field still has bench seating, and few will say that there isn’t a better place to watch an NFL game.
While big, fancy stadiums are nice, there is a great feel to a smaller traditional bowl stadium. It’s a more intimate experience. Here in Wisconsin, many fans felt the same way about the old UW Fieldhouse. It was cramped, square, had only one set of restrooms and many seats had obstructed views due to the pillars holding up the building. The Kohl Center was quickly one of the best facilities in the Big 10, however the feel just wasn’t right. I saw dozens of games at the Fieldhouse, but after 1 at the Kohl Center, I had my fill.
Lambeau has a storied history. That makes it something of an event to watch a game there which also makes it unique. In addition, they get snow and lots of it which would make bench seats a bit more practical for clearing (but not as good for sittiing) and also specific to stadiums that get weather (e.g. Chicago, Buffalo etc). In CA, snow isn’t a factor and thus bench seats are not needed.
In this day and age, stadiums are competing with high-definition television for people. It has gotten to the point where I get a much better experience at home (better beer, better weather (in my living room), better food, better view of the game, better information about the game, ability to pause…) than I would ever get at the game. Lambeau might be an exception because of the history angle, but for the vast majority of stadiums (and certainly for Cal which really doesn’t have a storied football history), the experience and history of the stadium isn’t enough to make up for the expense of an uncomfortable seat (along with all the other “features” of going to the game like parking, knuckleheads, overpriced crappy food, bathroom troughs and so on) and the alternative things you could do with your ticket money. If you are going to pay $100 for an event, don’t you think you would want a bit more comfort than a bench seat?
“Lambeau Field still has bench seating, and few will say that there isn’t a better place to watch an NFL game.”
I’ll bet.
Ok, I want everyone to look at this stadium and then think about how badly funding for CA university education has been slashed. No wonder our country is falling apart.
Wasn’t the whole reason for this refub the fact that the stadium was sitting directly over a fault line and the two halves were literally going to part company during the next largish quake?
I know this was the case with one of the west coast college stadiums (there was a TV show about it), not 100% that it was actually this one though.
The Hayward fault runs from goalpost to goalpost in Memorial Stadium.
JCD: “Personally I thought the old stadium was fine”
Well we all thought the old site design was fine a well, but we are left with this mess!
You can’t even navigate from the home page to older articles! Who did this?
He thought the old stadium was fine, but thinks this new site is an improvement????