Fix Your Danged Stadium Already! (No. 1: Eastern Michigan University)

In honor of fast-approaching Halloween, I am doing a series on problem stadiums that haunt programs at the FBS level. 

These recommendations were originally conceived in a thread I wrote a few years back at Collegesportsinfo.com, based on muti-year attendance averages vs. stadium capacities.  My opinions have been refined over the years using feedback from other sports fans.

For every FBS program, football should be the university's No. 1 or 1A revenue generating sport.  Potentially, football revenue and football-inspired alumni donations could pay for all of the other sports.  If you blow football, you will lose massive amounts of money on sports.

At the bottom end of the FBS, stadium troubles often cause a lot of issues.

I am going to start at the very bottom of the FBS attendance roll.

No. 1 Eastern Michigan University

Eastern Michigan has long been the worst-attended program at the FBS Level, drawing less than 10,000 per game over multiple years.

Some have argued that as a strong reason for EMU to move to the FCS level.

My personal feelings on the matter are that changing affiliations should never be your first step.  Address the factors that haunt your program today and then evaluate the level at which you should play.

Some of the issues that figure into EMU's attendance issues cannot be changed. 

EMU is only seven miles away from the University of Michigan, which draws 110K per game.  Even though the Wolverines are not a pro team, they might as well be.  EMU is playing in what I have named a "Killzone."  They are competing against a football business that dominates the public's football entertainment dollars in their area, just like NFL teams do in NFL Killzones.

EMU is also a bit of a commuter school.  That hurts attendance as well.

These factors strongly suggest EMU will not draw a consistent 25,000 to Rynearson at any point in the next 20 years, no matter how competitive they are on the field.

But there is one glaring factor that can be fixed to help attendance.  Rynearson itself.

What is wrong with Rynearson?

One might look at Rynearson Stadium and say it is a pretty nice stadium that lacks the cobbled together feel of a lot of other MAC schools.  The seats are all along the sides of the field, which should really be ideal for drawing good attendance to a small FBS stadium.

So why does this stadium hurt them?

The placement of the field.  It absolutely kills them.

With the track there, there is nothing that can be done to fix the field placement.

The stadium was expanded twice and apparently done badly both times.  In 1974, the WFL's Detroit Wheels played at Rynearson, leading to an expansion of the stadium capacity to 22,227.   They drew horrifically at Rynearson .  In 1992, the stadium was expanded to satisfy the NCAA's then minimum capacity rules to its current capacity of 30,200.

Sadly, the leadership of EMU made the same error that a lot of small FBS programs make and built around the running track instead of taking out the running track.

Track draws a few hundred fans. FBS football draws tens of thousands of fans. 

The two sports have entirely different fan requirements and should ideally never be addressed by a shared resource.  That track should have been taken out and built around a soccer field or something.

A small FBS school can build a workable stadium with a track as long as the needs of the football program are not compromised.  After all, football is the main revenue generating sports at FBS schools.

It is fine to have a track around your football field if your stadium seating is on each sideline from goal line to goal line, but usually once you hit a capacity of about 20,000-25,000, any kind of cost effective expansion—the kind a MAC school might do—needs to go in the end zones.

The mistake that poorer Division IA universities often made in the 1970s to late 1990s was to retain the track and build the end zones around the track.  Doing this creates thousands of bad seats that fans do not want to sit in.  It in essence creates seats that will usually be empty, which in turn makes the stadium feel empty, further discouraging fans from attending.

This is the mistake that EMU made with the 1992 NCAA mandated expansion. That expansion turned what should be a wonderful tribute to a coaching legend into a disrespectful black eye.

It is high time for that to be rectified.

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