Yankee Stadium To Host a Bowl Game

(Zell's Pinstripe Blog)

It’s been forty-seven years since Yankee Stadium last hosted a bowl game. The Yankees announced this past Wednesday that they have agreed to a four-year deal with the Big East to host an annual college football game in the Bronx. The game will include a team from the Big East and the Big 12. This will start at the end of the 2010 season. Mayor Bloomberg said that the game could possibly bring 40,000 visitors and roughly $47 million to the city. The new stadium has four regular-season games already planned, with Army vs. Notre Dame on Nov. 20, 2010.

The Yankees held a big press conference the other day, and in attendance were Hal Steinbrenner, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., Big East commissioner John Marinatto and Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe.

Yankees President, Randy Levine thinks that the game has potential to be affiliated with New Year’s Eve at Times Square, like how the Rose Bowl is connected to New Year’s Day and the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, Calif.

My question is…how will this work out? If you look at the depiction of how they plan to fit the football field inside the stadium, the corners of the endzone go into the dugouts and into the bullpen. It looks like it will be a very tight fit. Lonn Trost, the Yankees chief operating officer said that the stadium was built  with football games in mind, but it doesn’t seem like it.

Are they going to be ripping down walls to get this done? It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Some quotes from the press conference:

“Football was important to my father,” Hal Steinbrenner said of his dad, George. “He played it, he coached it at Northwestern, it’s always been a love of his. He was extremely excited when I told him about this. We all know the rich history of football across the street.”

“Nobody stages big events like the Big Apple. We’ve got the experience, we’ve got the resources, and we’ve got the spirit,” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. “It’s a win for the fans of both teams playing, and it’s a win for New York.”

The Big East’s Marinatto summed it up best, though. “Big East, Big 12, Big Apple,” he said. “Big time.”

“The Big East has long prided itself on having made it in New York City,” said Big East Commissioner John Marinatto, alluding to the Big East men’s basketball championship at Madison Square Garden. “Now we’re back for football in perhaps the most famous stadium in the world.”

“When you build a stadium such as this one, keeping it open for 81 days in the regular season and 11 possible days in the postseason really isn’t enough. In today’s world, you need to keep this venue open all the time,” Trost said. “We made a special effort to winterize this entire building. This building works for baseball, it works for football. It’s been designed for both.”