University of Texas DKR Football Stadium Expansion and Renovation

[brando]

Some Tidbits from Chip Brown. Take them for what they are worth:

DKR IMPROVEMENTS

Improvements to DKR this fall will include an LED renovation to Godzillatron, new speakers throughout the stadium (including microphones for the band so you can actually hear the Longhorn band!) as well as improving the strength of the WIFI by 300 percent.

While locker room renovations are well underway, DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium renovations are set to begin in the coming weeks. According to drawings attached to the University of Texas' request for proposals, the Longhorns are looking to add the following updates inside the football stadium:

South Endzone,



West Sideline,





North Endzone





East Sideline



Upgrades to the main video board are expected to be complete by July 19, with the remaining stadium modifications finalized by August 1, according to documents obtained by Horns Digest.

All of the new ribbon LED displays should be cool. They can do a lot of neat stuff with those. The new LED scoreboard will be great as well. It'll likely be sharper and brighter but the display is only about 190 sq feet larger which isn't a lot when you are looking at it from so far away. A complete teardown and rebuild of the South Endzone is in the master plan but that is far out. It's likely a lower priority than the new basketball arena since they want to teardown the Erwin Center to expand the new Medical School. The new south end zone will just consist of a lower bowl and suites and won't mirror the north end zone. It's unlikely they could build a 2nd level since it would require a bigger footprint that might require the athletic facilities to be completely torn down. I doubt they need that much additional capacity. I think a lot of this has to do with adding additional better seating than just adding a lot more seats. The south end zone is typically reserved for the band and UT spirit groups.

BETTER GAMEDAY EXPERIENCE

Perhaps the biggest change coming to Texas football gameday experience is Tom Herman's push to reduce so-called "ads" aired on the video board during games. (THANK THE LAWDY!!!)

Obviously, this is a hugely sensitive subject for Texas women's athletic director Chris Plonsky, who is in charge of marketing and has given Texas marketing partner IMG a lot of leeway in selling ad packages that includes "a presence" inside DKR during games.

I'm told the football office would like for graphics wizards Tommy Lakes and Matt Lange to be turned loose in creating energy raising video clips that would be tagged with an advertiser logo briefly at the end. The video ring inside DKR at the mezzanine level, which will be connected from the east side, around the north end to the west side, could also be used to satisfy previous agreements with advertisers, sources said.

"It's been made very clear that Tom Herman thinks the advertising being done on the video board detracts from the gameday experience," one source close to the situation said. "And right now, it's been, 'What Tom Herman wants, Tom Herman gets.' So, there's a lot of discussion going on about how the gameday experience can be improved. It will probably be better in Year 2 and Year 3 than it might be in Year 1 - again, because of existing agreements. But it's going to get there." ...