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Old 05-17-2010, 10:35 AM   #1
swg
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Nippert Too Small

The concourses are congested. The restrooms and concession stands have long lines.

There's only a smidgen of premium seating, and the overall capacity of 35,000 may no longer be enough to sustain a University of Cincinnati football program that during the past few years has received unparalleled fan support while the Bearcats were winning back-to-back Big East championships.

In many ways, the 86-year-old structure has become obsolete.

"I joke with people that we have more contact on our concourse level than we do on the field," said athletic director Mike Thomas. "We need to address that."

Despite its shortcomings, the stadium remains cherished for its charm and historical significance, standing prominently in the center of the UC campus. And in recent years it has provided the Bearcats, who have won their last 12 games there, with one of the Big East's best home-field advantages.

Butch Jones has yet to coach his first game as UC's head coach, but he was at Nippert in 2005 when he was an assistant at West Virginia.

"I know coming in here as a visiting coach and being on the opposite sideline that playing in Nippert Stadium was a concern for us," Jones said. "It's definitely a home-field advantage. I know our kids love playing at Nippert with all the tradition that it brings."

The question that UC faces is how to capitalize on that tradition while keeping the stadium financially viable - and not detracting from the aesthetics of a campus that has undergone a massive renovation in the past decade and was rated this year by Forbes magazine as one of the world's most attractive.

While the goals for the stadium are clear, there's not yet a consensus on how to reach them.

"We need to address Nippert Stadium," Thomas said. "What that means, I couldn't quite define for you."

Upgrading Nippert Stadium - which former UC coach Brian Kelly once called "the Wrigley Field of college football" - is an extremely complicated project that remains in the embryonic stages.

Unlike some schools that can renovate what they have without major impediments, or locate a parcel of land to build a new facility from the ground up, UC has unique challenges with Nippert Stadium because of its location in the center of an urban, land-locked campus.

The process has begun in the form of a marketing study for premium seating and an architectural study to provide options for improving the stadium. But more studies need to be done before decisions can be reached on how to do the renovation, what it would cost and how to raise the money to pay for it.

As complex as the situation appears, Thomas says it's not impossible.

"It just means that we're going to have to do more due diligence in the process," Thomas said.

"The one thing that everybody likes about Nippert is its location in the middle of campus, its charm and its history. Some of those things are the reason that makes it more of a challenge. It's not out in the middle of a prairie. We've got a lot of things to consider that make this more of a challenge."

The goals of the architectural study, done for UC by HNTB, are:

To add 10,000 to 15,000 seats; add 30 to 40 suites; add 400 club seats; expand accommodations for the media; improve circulation and relieve congestion; expand and improve spectator amenities; and increase accessible seating.

Those goals become more challenging because of other objectives, such as maintaining the view corridors into the stadium from CCM Plaza and from the intersection of Corry Boulevard, Varsity Drive and CCM Boulevard; maintaining the view corridor into the stadium from Bearcat Plaza adjacent to the Tangeman University Center, and maintaining views from the athletic offices in Lindner Center.

"One (issue) is, can you expand?" said Mary Beth McGrew, associate vice president and university architect. "Two is, does it fit into the context of the campus? And that is equally as difficult to study as can you expand."

The study, which McGrew emphasized is not a plan, lists several different schemes, with seating capacity as high as 44,798 in one.

But the scheme listed as the study's final recommendation calls for a seating capacity of 38,692, with 800 new club seats on the east side, 32 new suites on the west side with 16 seats each, 50 loge boxes on the east side with 16 seats each, 1,100 Dieterle Center club seats, 2,520 new upper-deck seats on the west side and 7,200 new upper deck seats on the east side.

Using the Dieterle Vocal Arts Center, which overlooks the south end zone, is not being considered, McGrew said, because there is no other option for the CCM students who currently use that building. For now, her emphasis is to study the west concourse near the Tangeman Center.

"This seems to be something worth considering," McGrew said. "It could hold a lot of revenue-generating seating. It maybe could connect to TUC, we don't know, but it has the capacity to house some special seating. We also want to look at some of these historical walls that are part of our charm but may restrict the concourse. Could we move them out a little bit?"

Some have suggested that UC simply lower the field to create room for more upper deck seating without blocking existing views.

But it's not that simple.

"That's one of the first things everybody thinks of," McGrew said, "just lower it. There are major storm lines and major electric running underneath there."

The Nippert Stadium site has been the home of UC football since 1902 when it was known as Carson Field. It's the nation's fourth-oldest playing site for college football and fifth-oldest stadium.

In 1923, James Gamble donated $250,000 to complete the stadium in memory of his grandson, Jimmy Nippert, who sustained a spike wound injury playing against Miami and died a month later from blood poisoning. In 1924, Nippert Stadium was dedicated with seating for 12,000.

The stadium's most recent major renovation occurred in 1991 and 1992 when the concrete structure was fortified, a new three-tiered press box was added and the Herschede-Shank Pavilion was expanded to bring the capacity to its current 35,000.

The football field has occupied a central role in shaping the UC campus.

According to McGrew, maps of the campus drawn shortly after the school was moved in the 1890s - from downtown to what was then part of Burnett Woods - show a ridge of academic buildings along Clifton Avenue and a natural depression which would become the football field.

"That depression in campus was in part a suggestion to the extent that land informs a campus," McGrew said. "In terms of a built structure, the stadium is not really beautiful by itself, but being in the middle of that depression is part of the nature of how the campus was built."

In addition to deciding what can be done to Nippert Stadium and at what cost, athletic officials have several other factors to consider.

Until the last few years, UC had trouble attracting fans to its football games. Will the demand for tickets continue if the team has a few down years? What will happen to the Big East, which has been so instrumental in UC's football success, if the Big Ten raids it of several members?

And if you assume ticket demand will remain as high or higher, would it eventually make more sense to move all of UC's home games to 65,535-seat Paul Brown Stadium downtown, where the Bearcats will play Oklahoma on Sept. 25 of this year?

Big East members South Florida and Pittsburgh both play their home games in NFL stadiums.

Thomas won't rule out the possibility of using PBS as the Bearcats' home field. Ideally, though, he said, he would like to play one game every season against a marquee opponent downtown and keep the other home games on campus.

"All parties would agree that our first goal would be to see if we can make it work on campus," Thomas said.

At the moment, no one knows exactly what that would entail, either technically or financially.

"We always worry about the cost," McGrew said, "but the driving factor first had to be, what are the technical issues? Of course, the cost would always be a part of would you do any of this? It's challenges and opportunities."


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