Tinker:
The fourth of July has come
and gone and the long ten year war in Afghanistan/Iraq is still on the
American back burner. The middle East is in turmoil with a lot of people
living over there trying to win the high ground in bloody conflicts. No
one really knows just how bad its going to get over there.
America was attacked by some sneaky terrorist
headed by Osama bin Laden that the American military recently killed in
Pakistan of all places right next door to Afghanistan. The enemy of my
enemy is my friend in middle East folklore.
The American independence has been one war after
another against the other people around our world off and on for as long
as I can remember.
My goodness we ever had a bloody fight with each other with the Northern States against the Southern States. Approximately 620,000 soldiers died from combat, accident, starvation, and disease during the Civil War.
When slavery was the center of
everything in America and the Southern States broke away from the
government of the United States over that argument.
The fighting spirit of very brave men are something that we all learn about one way or another. But never was that more clearer than in the brave soldiers who had to fight for their life in one of the bloodiest battles in the American civil war, Gettysburg.
----------------
http://www.civilwar.org/
Civil War Facts
Answers to your Civil War Questions
Many elements of Civil War scholarship are still hotly debated.
The facts on this page are based on the soundest information
available. -------------------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Gettysburg (2011) History Channel CIVIL WAR DOCUMENTARY
---------------http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Dixie (The Hastings College Choir)
---------------http://drudgereport.com/
OBAMA URGENT MEETING AFTER BRO OVERTHROW
----------------------
http://drudgereport.com/
IT CAN WAIT UNTIL AFTER THE ELECTION...
---------------
http://msnvideo.msn.com/?
Extreme Fourth of July celebrations
---------------
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/
News for lois lerner want immunity
After Taking the Fifth , Lois Lerner Wants Immunity Over IRS Scandal | Katie Pavlich
Town Hall - by Katie Pavlich
After Taking the Fifth, Lois Lerner Wants Immunity Over IRS Scandal - Katie Pavlich: Surprise surprise. After making an opening statement ...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
The Washington Post
The White House pushed dirt on Darrell Issa, book says
In the summer of 2010, with Republicans poised to take over the House and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) in line to lead the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the White House started urging reporters to write negative stories about the congressman’s past, a new book says.New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich describes what he says were the anti-Issa efforts in “This Town,” a condemnation of Washington self-obsession and self-promotion, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Post.
According to Leibovich, former Obama deputy press secretary Bill Burton and suggested the reporter look into Issa’s past.
RELATED: Who else does ‘This Town’ dish dirt on?
RELATED: Are you in This Town? The Unauthorized Index
--------------
Sports
LSU Footall - Geaux Tigers!!!
Bayou Bengals Insider In-Depth Chart: Running Back
Tiger Sports Digest Top 50 LSU players: No. 22 - Danielle Hunter
Tiger Sports Digest Baseball Position Outlook: Starting rotation
Geaux 247 A look at junior running back Kenny Hilliard
FOX Sports Arizona Reds prospect Chad Jones resurrects dream after horrific crash
USA Today Ole Miss offensive lineman killed in car accident
ESPN Blog Video (85 sec): DE Jermauria Rasco is LSU's X factor for 2013
---------------
MarlinMan
LSU Fan
Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
Member since Sep 2007
1417 posts
8 years with Les.....what are your thoughts.... (Posted on 7/4/13 at 2:49 am)
THE GOOD
-recruiting has been great (second only to Saban)
-player conditioning has been excellent (Moffitt)
-player development has been good (less freaks like Kiki, Matheu, Montgomery, etc)
-program has been run mostly clean with high graduation rates
-winning percentage is excellent and stadium sells out every game (as good as it gets)
-a National Championship and 2 SEC titles
THE BAD
-95+ % of all games are close (includes good and bad teams)
-coaching staff decisions have been marginal at best (less Chief) ie. Maleveto, Stud as OC with no OL coaching, etc (position coaches have been hit/miss)
-team discipline has been poor with preseason arrests that have negatively affected the season (somewhat common with elite players...happens other places too)
-game day coaching has been poor (strategy and use of players... Has gotten worse over the last 2 years)
-game day organization and discipline has been poor (penalties, delay of game, busted plays, use of time outs, etc)
What are your thoughts?
---------
Draconian Sanctions
LSU Fan
San Francisco 49ers Fan
Member since Oct 2008
29755 posts
Online
Consider This (Posted on 7/4/13 at 12:43 pm)
#1 The "juniors declared" number that people keep talking about includes 2 third string or worse running backs, a punter, a tackle that didn't play a down for us last season, and a defensive lineman that openly admitted to taking plays and games off.
#2 We return 34 of 44 on the 2 deep
#3 We return more starters than Texas A&M and the same as Alabama
#4 We played the 2nd most freshmen the country last season
---------------
http://www.tigerrag.com/?p=
Facelift for an icon
July 3, 2013 - © 2013 Tiger Rag
This article appears in Tiger Rag’s commemorative 35th anniversary issue, which will hit newsstands next week.
By LUKE JOHNSON
Tiger Rag Assistant Editor
Tiger Rag Assistant Editor
Right around the time this publication was printing
its first issue, Tiger Stadium was putting the finishing touches on a
massive expansion that would add 8,000 raucous fans to the game day
atmosphere.
Since that time, more expansions have come and more
still are in the works that could potentially make Death Valley one of
just seven college football stadiums to seat more than 100,000 people.
But it’s grown beyond stuffing more people in the
unfriendly confines and making Tiger Stadium even more loud and
unnerving than it’s become notorious for.
Death Valley, the place where opponents’ dreams come to die, is getting a makeover.
“It was a no-brainer to fix it up,” said Athletic Director and Vice Chancellor Joe Alleva.
Added Associate Athletic Director Eddie Nunez: “Now
we can make it really nice. Because we’re going to be here for hopefully
another 100 years in this stadium, and we want to make sure this
stadium lives and lasts.”
“MAKE IT A SHOWPLACE”
Fearsome? Yes. Awe-inspiring? Perhaps. Scenic? No way.
For all the qualities that have made Tiger Stadium legendary, it’s never been confused for a pageant winner.
Ugly cracks ran down a grimy and splotchy gray
exterior. Rusted and cracked windows let the moist Louisiana air into
asbestos-ridden dormitories. It wasn’t a dump, but it’s safe to say the
best pictures came from inside the stadium.
“In my opinion, the outside of the stadium was
embarrassing,” Alleva said. “Windows were broken, old air-conditioning
units were hanging out, all the concrete around was all cracked and
broken, chain link fences were rusty and broken down — the outside of
the stadium didn’t represent what LSU should have.”
“Our most prominent building on campus should be first-class, clean and beautiful.”
It was none of those things, at least not the old
Tiger Stadium. But in the last five years, Death Valley has gotten much
easier on the eye.
At least $10 million has gone into improving the
areas immediately outside the stadium. A plaza — complete with
recognition of LSU’s historical greats and fancy new entrance gates —
was constructed on the west side of the stadium before last year’s
season opener. A similar one will be unveiled on the north side before
the start of the 2013 campaign.
That cracked and dingy exterior is now smooth and
uniform-colored, a waterproofing process that started on the north side
and will extend all the way around the stadium.
The broken windows were taken care of in 2010, when a private fund raising effort replaced 428 windows at $2,000 a pop.
Giant 10-foot letters saying “Tiger Stadium” now
grace the Western façade. At night, the archways are lit up in purple
and gold to make the place a beacon on LSU’s campus.
Tiger Stadium is now a real looker.
“It’s a great opportunity for us to make it a
showplace,” Nunez said. “Visitors that come, not just on a Saturday but
on a Sunday, on the regular 300-some days a year there’s not a football
game, we want them to walk around and say, ‘Wow, this is Tiger Stadium.
This is a great campus.’”
CHALLENGES OF THE UNSEEN
The facelift the stadium has undergone in the last
five years has provided visual evidence for the overhaul currently
taking place. But the aesthetic improvements mean nothing without proper
maintenance of a venue quickly approaching its 90th year of existence.
“The reality is we had to do something, because if
not that stadium would continue to get dilapidated, continue to fall
apart and we did not want it to get to a point where we would have to
spend three times as much to get it to be a usable space,” Nunez said.
Unique challenges were presented by the archaic
infrastructure and by the nature of south Louisiana. Workers had to deal
with soil being firm in one area but soft 10 feet away and a
decades-old drainage system that was in disrepair.
“When we got here 10 years ago, the drains leading
out of the field were basically clogged, broken, so it would never drain
properly,” Nunez said. “We invested a considerable amount of money just
to get that corrected.”
“Things that people would never see, but today we’re fortunate to have that in place.”
Even some of the cosmetic improvements had a maintenance-driven thought process.
“The window replacement project didn’t just clean it
up and make it look nice,” Nunez said. “We also had a lot of issues with
moisture in the facility and it helped us secure the inside of the
stadium without having problems with moisture intrusion.”
“We’ve been looking at this for about 10 years,” Nunez said. “Over the last five years it’s really what you see now.”
GRAND SCHEME
It took a Hall of Fame baseball coach to put the wheels in motion on the new-look Tiger Stadium.
Skip Bertman, serving as athletic director after
retiring from his post as the LSU baseball coach, saw a stadium that was
beginning to show the effects of sitting in place for the better part
of a century.
The beast on the southwest corner of campus was in dire need of a shot in the arm.
“It was very stagnant for a long time,” Bertman said.
“The football team wasn’t doing real well. They had a couple good years
… then they slowed down, and not much was done to any facilities.”
“It was kind of dormant there from the late 80s to the 90s.”
Bertman and his staff looked at every athletic
facility with specific emphasis on the football stadium. Despite its
condition that was nearing a dilapidated status, the staff knew it could
never tear down those hallowed grounds and start from scratch on a new
chunk of campus.
“We knew we had to invest the time, the effort and
the money into that venue,” said Associate Athletic Director Eddie
Nunez. “When coach Bertman was here, we started that approach.”
The most recent expansion, a $60 million reconfigurement of the 1978
west side upper deck and press area, was finished under Bertman’s eye in
2006.
“The football stadium costs a lot of money to keep standing every year,” Bertman said.
Boy, does it ever.
PRIVATE FUNDING
Death Valley beautification isn’t driven from the
state or the university. Everything that is happening in and around
Tiger Stadium is funded privately through the Tiger Athletitc Foundation
(TAF)
“You can never say this enough: There are no tax
dollars in LSU athletics,” Bertman said. “There are no student fees in
LSU athletics.”
Funding for Tiger Stadium’s renovations was done by
two means, just like it is for every facility on campus. The big
projects, like the south side expansion, were funded through bond
issues. The smaller projects, like the windows and plazas, were funded
philanthropically.
The south side expansion will eat up roughly $70
million of a $100 million bond for athletic facilities. The windows
($1.5 million) and plazas ($7 million) were funded by robust fund
raising efforts.
LSU repays TAF with income generated at games, essentially as a rent payment.
MAKING THE CHANGES COUNT
When the 2014 home opener rolls around, the Tigers will hope to join the elite century club.
The south side expansion should push LSU’s attendance
figures north of the 100,000 benchmark, adding 3,000 club level seats,
approximately 1,500 upper deck seats and 60 luxury suites that each seat
23 people.
The 60 luxury suites will nearly double LSU’s
previous total of 70 suites in the stadium. Each suite sells for tens of
thousands of dollars per season.
But the question should be asked: Is LSU confident it can keep filling the stadium with the advances in technology?
“We have to keep that in mind because as we are
embarking on a new age where technology continues to get better and
better and better, we have to do our part from an athletic venue
standpoint to continue to make it interesting for the fans that come and
enjoy the event,” Nunez said.
Even in the midst of unparalleled success, average
attendance for Southeastern Conference football games has steadily
sagged since hitting an all-time high in 2008.
With cheap beer and a 60-inch TV screen that brings
the game to life from a living room, universities are looking for ways
to keep pace. That starts with fan experience.
“We have to continually make sure that we provide the
amenities to have a quality fan experience in Tiger Stadium so they
keep coming back,” Alleva said. “What makes Tiger Stadium so special are
the fans, and if you don’t have fans in Tiger Stadium, you lose that
quality.”
“It’s critical for us to provide the best fan experience possible so people don’t stay home to watch it on TV.”
Comments
Response to “Facelift for an icon”-
David H Stewart on
July 3rd, 2013 1:24 pm
There’s simply no place in the world like TIGER STADIUM!!!!!!! Geaux Tigers!!!!!!!!!!
-
TigerGumbo on
Your comment July 4th, 2013 11:33 am
Meet me by the hill outside tiger stadium close to the laundry. We will wait to see the exciting LSU band slowly march down the hill there together, Then the tiger band will play that magic song and sound before we all go inside to sit and wait for the football game to start...http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=Hqa-zeENrxM
No comments:
Post a Comment