Big East Wants Better Bowls (Two Articles)

[Bull Matrix]

You do know that you can still play football in a baseball stadium dont you?? I expect that the bowl would be played at the Trop at first then move to the new Rays stadium if that comes to reality. Sure the capacity would only be about 40k for the baseball stadium, but that is ok since the INSIGHT bowl used Arizona Diamondbacks for their game as well as the Emerald Bowl using the SF Giants for their bowl game.

[BrahmanBulliever]

It really isnt a benefit to have a huge number of seats for 2nd/3rd tier bowls. Having 70k in charlette to fill is kind've a tough sell, to be honest expecting 35k from each team is a bit much since it's not like even the locals really care about 3/4 vs. 5/7 in one of the 'lesser' BCS conferences.

[BullsWinBucsWin]

Interesting line about the Rays' new stadium:

http://blogs.tampabay.com/rays/2007/11/rays-unveil-dra.html

Although the stadium will be designed for baseball, it will be able to accommodate other events, including football, which could lead to a college football bowl game.

[GarySJ]

Designing a baseball-specific stadium to host football, when there's a perfectly good Raymond James Stadium in the same town, is the height of stupidity.

It is precisely this sort of "build it and they will come" hubris that led to the construction of the outmoded Suncoast Dome/Thunderdome/Tropicana Dome the Rays are currently trying to escape from.

I know that the Mariners and Diamondbacks baseball stadiums have hosted football bowl games. But guess what? They stopped hosting those games when new football-specific stadiums became available. Those were temporary measures. As for the bowl game at the San Francisco Giants' stadium, the park was mostly privately funded and I'm guessing they need the revenue.

If the bay area wants to build a baseball-specific stadium for the Rays, fine. There is no reason whatsoever to configure it for football. If Tampa wants to host a second bowl game, let it be played in RJS. If they can't sell out the upper deck, so what? It'll be like a lower-tier USF regular season game. Those were still pretty fun last time I checked.