I wanted to throw out another post sort of explaining the conversation I started on scrapping the Horseshoe. There is a
TL;DR at the bottom where I try to rephrase what I meant, but also ... here's a bunch of words and pictures.
First off, I am not sure I think the Horseshoe shape is as integral to the design of Memorial Stadium as others, given it looks like it was tacked on to go around the track and provide a few more seats, as seen with the awkward dividing wall in this older photo ... East Main looks a lot more "planned" or "permanent" than what got built in the SEZ:
I would argue it has always been the ugly stepchild of the stadium, and it could have originally been seen as a placeholder for something grander in the future. With that said, and as I mentioned above,
I am NOT against keeping the horseshoe shape if it can work alongside fixing the current issues! If someone assured me it could, I wouldn't favor another design over a renovation that kept the horseshoe shape in general.
However, can we all agree that it would be a massive miss if any serious money were spent on an SEZ renovation that didn't (1) substantially increase the height of the stands (which would
necessarily require a steeper incline to the seats!!) and (B) move the first row of fans
way closer to the field? JMO, but a proper college football stadium is "closed in" as much as possible in a way that maintains architectural integrity and helps to trap noise/improve the home field advantage. That doesn't have to be a bowl or any other shape; there are creative ways to do it! However, I would argue that it is not debatable that one current glaring issue with our otherwise A+ stadium is that we go from this height on the east side (which looks becoming of a Blue Blood stadium)...
... to this height right next to it, which looks (and I am in no way joking here) like a Texas high school stadium in isolation...
Probably beating my point to death here, but I think this third photo provides a good angle to see what a visually jarring shift takes place ... it just looks like we stopped building the stadium prematurely and the Horseshoe was supposed to also have a balcony to match the east side and complete the look of the stadium:
I've posted a few mockups before where we simply bring the Horseshoe stands down to field level (i.e., fill in the silly gap in front) and add more seats on back (but extending back at the same angle). An example is below, and it does look like a substantial improvement from this angle:
What I worry about with this, though, is that we get a "Rose Bowl scenario," where the stands look cool and imposing from the air, but the slope is so absurdly gradual that they are doing an extremely poor job at providing height and trapping noise. Example of two angles of the Rose Bowl below:
Looks huge...
Doesn't look quite as huge, lol...
An opposite example is Tennessee's Neyland Stadium - almost always ranked among the best home atmospheres in the nation. While it still looks like a very big stadium (because it is!), you could be forgiven for thinking that the upper deck doesn't hold THAT many seats from the aerial view ... in fact, from this angle isolated sections of the upper deck look similar to the Horseshoe as far as number of rows and such...
... but because it is one of the steepest inclines in college football stadiums, the view from the field is imposing and super cool:
We don't just need more seats in the Horseshoe ... hell, it seats the same number of fans as Iowa's much more impressive north end zone! We need those seats higher up in the air to trap noise and look intimidating.
TL;DR yet again, lol...
Let's say we keep the horseshoe shape, which I am again fine with in theory - maybe we add some seats in front, add some seats in back and sprinkle in some cool suites. My question is can we realistically do this while fundamentally re-angling the slope of the seats? Because I think we
HAVE to do that and/or add an upper deck. We just simply need more height in the SEZ than can be provided by adding seats at the current slope to the current Horseshoe. If we can tear out the existing seats and rebuild a "Horseshoe 2.0" that is at a taller/steeper angle AND doesn't cover up the two towers in the corner (two crown jewels of the stadium that need prioritized), I am all for that!! I was just starting to look at pictures and wonder if that was going to be possible.
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