A huge "Ole!" to UNO goalie Jerad Kaufmann, who's organizing a Military Appreciation Night tomorrow night to honor Bryan McDonough, a high school friend of Kaufmann who was killed in Iraq in December 2006. Kaufmann designed special uniforms for the game, but won't be available for the game due to a shipping snafu.
Nebraska announced yesterday that per-game football ticket prices ($52) would remain the same for season ticketholders. Single game tickets for conference games and Virginia Tech are $65, with Western Michigan, San Jose State, and New Mexico State going for $55. With an 8 game schedule, that will total $416. How much do you want to bet that in 2009 and only seven games, the season ticket package will run closer to $416 than $364? (That's an old Bill Byrne trick that allowed Byrne to claim that he wasn't raising ticket prices.)
How about that Husker basketball victory over Oklahoma last night? That's three straight against NCAA tournament caliber teams. It sounds a little absurd, but the way Doc Sadler has this team playing now, post-season play is looking like a very real possibility. Nebraska's wins over Oregon and Arizona State don't look quite as good as they did in December, but the loss against Western Kentucky is better.
Are Omahans starting to warm up to the new stadium idea? Much of the early reaction was rather vehement against replacing Rosenblatt, but I think that more than a few people are realizing that either (a) this is really the right answer or (b) this is going to happen. There haven't been any scientific surveys taken on this, but the unscientific web surveys went from 80-20 against replacing Rosenblatt last fall to a much more even split on today's surveys on the Omaha World-Herald and KMTV-channel 3 web sites. Don't get me wrong; the outrage from the "Save Rosenblatt" side is still loud and shrill as they fight the NCAA and their requests for major stadium improvements.
One thing I've seen discussed on the Nebraska message boards regarding a downtown Omaha stadium is the parking and driving issue. Some apparently think it's going to take an hour to get anywhere and then they're going to have to park two miles away and walk to the stadium.
ReplyDeleteThey couldn't be further from the truth. I live in Houston, and we have a downtown baseball stadium (Minute Maid Park) and a downtown arena (Toyota Center, where the Rockets play). I can park within five blocks of either for $5, and can get from my apartment to the front door in less than half an hour. People don't realize that downtown stadiums/arenas offer so many more parking lots and "escape routes" (roads leading away) that the traffic snarl is nothing like what you see out of a stadium that has two massive parking lots around it.
None of those people apparently have ever driven to an NU/CU or CWS game at Rosenblatt. The situation they fear exists at Rosenblatt now. Putting the stadium downtown can only help. Twice as many parking spots downtown. Three interstate access points downtown vs. only one.
ReplyDeleteI have been to a handful of sold-out events at the Qwest Center, and in each of those events, I was at my car 10 minutes after the event was over, and drove the 15 minutes home in about 20 minutes.
I suppose if you lived within walking distance of Rosenblatt, you'd have a case. But, many of those houses were going to be demolished at the request of the NCAA if Rosenblatt was retained, so even that argument probably doesn't fly either.
Mike, is the fact that Rosenblatt renovation would take 60-some homes new information? Did the South O folks hoping to keep pulling in their annual parking revenues know some of them would be losing their homes altogether? I ask because I hadn't seen that mentioned anywhere before the last few days, and I imagine that changes the minds of quite a few people pushing to keep the old park.
ReplyDeleteIt's not really new information from my perspective. I first heard about the idea to bulldoze all those houses about a year ago. But there have been so many things said over the last year, that it probably got lost.
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