Gameday Experience

Every year I try to take a look at the Gameday experience for a fan at the Doyt, because, if you want my opinion, that's the key thing that determines why we draw what we do, next to whether the team is winning.

With that in mind:

Aesthetically, the place has never looked better. Painting the steps orange helped create a wall of orange when you look from the other side, and there was some other painting and cleaning up that made the place look really good. That remains a positive, and small steps are taken each year to shore it up.

Whenever we have a big crowd, it strikes me that it never occurred to the people who built the stadium that all those seats would ever be sold. The aisles inside the stadium are so narrow that people get backed up all the way down the ramps, and its crazy. I know they tell you to get there early, but there's just no reason for it to take 20 minutes to move from the bottom of the ramp to the top.

You know, an engineer should have been able to calculate that the very wide ramps would have to dump out into the aisles, and those were significantly smaller, even if you can turn either way. And, there are people walking in the aisles moving around, too, and there's barely room for that.

Be that as it may, no one who is involved today can do anything about it, or had anything to do with it making it that way. Just a shame, in general, because when someone who doesn't come every time thinks about heading out for a big game, I think the congestion makes them not want to come again.

Same, in fact, with the parking. We were back in the tailgate area, and we sat for 30 minutes without moving an inch. I know traffic is bad everywhere after games, but that whole parking area is access by one narrow road. Reminds me of MIS.

The congestion stands----err, I mean concession stands....well, let's just say its my goal NEVER EVER to have to stand in line at one of them.

Nothing new there. These have been problems for a long time, and I guess they're going to stay that way.

The one thing that could be fixed, and should, is the laughably bad public address announcer. I don't know who this guy is, but he makes one error after another. More than once on Saturday he referred to Minnesota (as in the University of Minnesota) as Minneapolis? Are you kidding me? He has also, over time, mispronounced our own player's names (including Cole Magner), and made many embarrassing mistakes.

We can't rebuild the stadium, but we can get rid of this guy, and should.

Looking back, this sounds more negative than I mean it to. We have a great time at Falcon games and we're very happy with what has been done to improve the facility. We love where our season tickets are and appreciate the little changes that are made.

Adding some carts to sell drinks (for people who don't need to be in the food line) and get a new PA announcer, and we might be good to go!

(Note, I see some AZZ.com traffic that we ran out of programs :45 before the game. Don't buy them myself, but if true, that should be fixed, too)