I thought about making this a front-page op-ed but I'm neck-deep in previews at the moment and didn't want to disrupt the flow of content on the front page.
These are just my thoughts, not those of ownership, management, the moderation team and certainly not UA.
On the Coleman renovation plans, I'm for those. No further analysis needed.
On the Bryant-Denny plans, I'm not a fan.
Basically, the issues with the stadium boil down to two things...
1) How much corporate money can you capture between now and when the bill is paid off, and how much you can expect to retain after Saban leaves, and ...
2) What damage there's going to be within the Tide Pride structure once people understand what's actually about to happen.
I'm going to explain #2 first, particularly because reading other boards yesterday, we had people who couldn't grasp that when you take 5k seats out of premium Tide Pride areas and move them into the lower bowl, you're then going to have to displace 5k people from those seats into even lower areas, then 5k from the next tier, etc. The only ways to mitigate that are (a) some of those 5k pony up $40k to stay in their current tier (I would be surprised if more than a dozen people actually do that, given what they pay now) or (b) give up their tickets altogether and stay home. You can't reduce overall stadium capacity by several thousand and folks not get forced out, it's basic math.
At the moment, feedback is overwhelmingly positive for the changes, except for those who will be immediately displaced. I'd say it's likely many of those giving positive feedback to media surveys aren't season ticket holders, or they haven't yet thought of how forced displacement is going to trickle down to everyone from the freshly eliminated tier downward. Because now, every tier under the one you eliminated is also under pressure to pay more to stay unaffected.
As for #1, that's the really tricky one. Corporate dollars are finicky and Tuscaloosa is a small town, all things considered, so you can't just fall back on your locals if/when future demand turns down. Granted there will be plenty of Birmingham, Huntsville and Mobile clientele to use boxes every year but if the cost of boxes keeps going up and the on-field product turns down, companies without true local ownership find it harder to justify the expense. This has interplay with the general trend of lower general attendance, as you eventually reach a point where attending games isn't seen as a desirable perk.
The trick, with #1, is to get your debt paid off while the demand window is still up, and then annuitize the revenue going forward; so long as the intake exceeds maintenance and upkeep, there's no financial harm. But if this turns into a situation where you still have debt on the books and then you want to make ANOTHER change in 10 years, that's a problem. Because that's not what a university is for.
Saban becomes both the catalyst and the biggest risk; I don't care who you hire after he's gone -- Dabo, Jimbo, Pruitt, Kirby, Muschamp, the ghost of Bryant, my dog or a trained chimp -- the likelihood Alabama will continue to enjoy the level of success it has now is almost nil. So if that downturn comes and your low-loyalty/high-dollar clients leave, you're left with people that kept their season tickets throughout the DuBose and Shula years who you then forced out (or down a tier or two) back when times were at their best.
In my opinion, a reduction in capacity was probably inevitable, but is coming too soon, with quite a bit of risk to goodwill. Once the full scope of the plan starts to be felt outside of just the people sitting in U1/U2 West, that's going to lead to a less-positive outlook from those people who *actually attend games* and are donors, which is the perspective I care the most about. I won't say to the exclusion of all other viewpoints, but certainly people who don't attend games now have far less skin in the game.
These are just my thoughts, not those of ownership, management, the moderation team and certainly not UA.
On the Coleman renovation plans, I'm for those. No further analysis needed.
On the Bryant-Denny plans, I'm not a fan.
Basically, the issues with the stadium boil down to two things...
1) How much corporate money can you capture between now and when the bill is paid off, and how much you can expect to retain after Saban leaves, and ...
2) What damage there's going to be within the Tide Pride structure once people understand what's actually about to happen.
I'm going to explain #2 first, particularly because reading other boards yesterday, we had people who couldn't grasp that when you take 5k seats out of premium Tide Pride areas and move them into the lower bowl, you're then going to have to displace 5k people from those seats into even lower areas, then 5k from the next tier, etc. The only ways to mitigate that are (a) some of those 5k pony up $40k to stay in their current tier (I would be surprised if more than a dozen people actually do that, given what they pay now) or (b) give up their tickets altogether and stay home. You can't reduce overall stadium capacity by several thousand and folks not get forced out, it's basic math.
At the moment, feedback is overwhelmingly positive for the changes, except for those who will be immediately displaced. I'd say it's likely many of those giving positive feedback to media surveys aren't season ticket holders, or they haven't yet thought of how forced displacement is going to trickle down to everyone from the freshly eliminated tier downward. Because now, every tier under the one you eliminated is also under pressure to pay more to stay unaffected.
As for #1, that's the really tricky one. Corporate dollars are finicky and Tuscaloosa is a small town, all things considered, so you can't just fall back on your locals if/when future demand turns down. Granted there will be plenty of Birmingham, Huntsville and Mobile clientele to use boxes every year but if the cost of boxes keeps going up and the on-field product turns down, companies without true local ownership find it harder to justify the expense. This has interplay with the general trend of lower general attendance, as you eventually reach a point where attending games isn't seen as a desirable perk.
The trick, with #1, is to get your debt paid off while the demand window is still up, and then annuitize the revenue going forward; so long as the intake exceeds maintenance and upkeep, there's no financial harm. But if this turns into a situation where you still have debt on the books and then you want to make ANOTHER change in 10 years, that's a problem. Because that's not what a university is for.
Saban becomes both the catalyst and the biggest risk; I don't care who you hire after he's gone -- Dabo, Jimbo, Pruitt, Kirby, Muschamp, the ghost of Bryant, my dog or a trained chimp -- the likelihood Alabama will continue to enjoy the level of success it has now is almost nil. So if that downturn comes and your low-loyalty/high-dollar clients leave, you're left with people that kept their season tickets throughout the DuBose and Shula years who you then forced out (or down a tier or two) back when times were at their best.
In my opinion, a reduction in capacity was probably inevitable, but is coming too soon, with quite a bit of risk to goodwill. Once the full scope of the plan starts to be felt outside of just the people sitting in U1/U2 West, that's going to lead to a less-positive outlook from those people who *actually attend games* and are donors, which is the perspective I care the most about. I won't say to the exclusion of all other viewpoints, but certainly people who don't attend games now have far less skin in the game.
