My two cents: Arizona football needs fewer seats, earlier starts
The Pac-12 Networks last week announced Arizona’s Sept. 19 home game against NAU will kick off at 8 p.m. (or about 8:15, in actual time).
That’s a dreadful thing to do to Arizona fans, and it’s one of the reasons 6,000 seats are so hard to fill in the upper east grandstands.
Someday, if the UA can raise another $75 to $100 million for facilities improvements, it would behoove the school to chop down the upper deck — about 16,000 seats — and replace it with a more fan-friendly (and less steep) 10,000-seat upper deck.
Then tickets would become more in demand, and Arizona Stadium would take on a new personality.
ASU is in the process of a $256 million Sun Devil Stadium renovation that includes reducing capacity by about 10,000.
I don’t know how ASU can possibly pay $256 million without 50 years of debt service, and I can’t fathom Byrne raising another $75 million after last year’s makeovers to McKale Center and the 2013 construction of the Lowell-Stevens Football Facility. But Arizona Stadium, much like the Diamondbacks’ Chase Field, is just too big in an era when games begin too late.
