re: Yet another stadium getting upgrades over the box

I hate when people say “win and people will come” like no shite more people show up to watch a top ranked team. The goal should be to create an environment that is enjoyable for fans even when the team isn’t ranked in the top 10.

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Sure, but having a superior product matters far, far more for putting butts in seats. Also baseball has been sold out for season tickets for 30 years.

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Season tickets being sold don’t always correlate to actual butts in seats.

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The goal should be to create an environment that is enjoyable for fans even when the team isn’t ranked in the top 10.

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Damn right.

Tell these folks.

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You’re right. Giving the audience more reasons to stay home is a great business plan.

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Dylan Crews is a pretty good reason to get out to the Box. NIL obviously didn’t play a factor in his choosing LSU, it was about the tradition of the program, being able to face the best competition every weekend in front of 5-10,00 fans, depending on where we’re playing, etc…But there had to be at least a baseline for player amenities, and as far as I can tell, we rank pretty highly in that area.

Don’t we have a pretty high tech batting and pitching lab? Access to a nutrition center and chefs to cook their food? Jack Marucci to make them custom bats? One of the best—and most highly compensated—staffs in the country for players to learn from?

And now with NIL in the picture, that’s just one more place where more resources need to be allocated. I know we’d love to invest in it all, but is there enough to go around? It’s a difficult balance. What do players care about more? Where do we invest to where we can continue to get guys like Dylan Crews (ok, there will probably never be another Dylan Crews) to not just come to college, but to LSU specifically? And I think the idea of playing in the legendary Box (despite it not really being “The Box”) actually does factor in. And the idea of playing in front of “the best fans in baseball.” But that becomes more myth than reality the further we get from the magic of the 90s and that ‘09 season.

(Just as an aside, I’ve always said it’s REALLY hard to win national championships in any sport, and it’s harder to win it in college baseball now than it’s ever been. But I think it’s pretty important we add another year onto the Intimidator pretty quickly. 5 different SEC schools have won the CWS since ‘09, and Vandy and SC have both won it twice. So that’s 7 CWSs won by SEC team since we last hoisted the trophy. That’s got to end quickly if we want to keep leveraging the intangibles of our program’s history. ‘09 was great, and we had a lot of great players and won a lot of games with Paul, but I think the further we get from Skip each year, the more that magic and myth is forgotten about slightly).

And what does upgrading the fan experience do to the demographics of the season ticket holders? They’d obviously add some suites and raise ticket prices to help pay for any upgrades. Does that price out the blue-collar fan and make it a more corporate crowd, less likely to even show up if it’s not ideal weather, much less stay the whole game and make the noise that would provide actual home field/crowd advantage? This is certainly the narrative about how the Tiger Stadium crowd has changed.

I’m certainly not saying those are reasons to NOT upgrade the fan experience. I don’t live in Baton Rouge anymore, don’t have season tickets, and only get out to the Box a couple times a year if I’m lucky. I’m not the one sitting in hard metal bleachers 30 games a year, so I’d be a hypocrite to tell you that’s not a legit criticism that needs to be addressed immediately.

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You’d be very wrong.

This was the Bronx.

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You have no idea what you're talking about.

I certainly do.

I’ve watched hours upon hours of games, starting with the Ken Burns PBS documentary on baseball.

I’ve read thousands of pages of eyewitness accounts of what it was like to watch baseball at the Polo Grounds.

I’ve walked around in the five boroughs more times than I’d like to admit.

Thus, my opinion is formulated.


What have you done?

Anyway back to the topic at hand, my box wishlist in order of urgency:

1) Bullpens out of play
2) Replace bleacher seats down the lines and in LF with chairbacks
3) Party deck replaces RF bleachers for the student section

I’m not you buddy, pal.

I’m not your friend, Pal

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Party deck

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Pathetic.

People should party when and wherever they want.

Trying to cage a party is stupidity.

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All that and you ignore Crews and Tanks saying they came for the fans and experience. So keeping the fans in the stands is kind of a big deal.

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I didn’t ignore it. I said, regarding getting the elite guys to not only come to college in general, but LSU specifically:

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And I think the idea of playing in the legendary Box (despite it not really being “The Box”) actually does factor in. And the idea of playing in front of “the best fans in baseball.”

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Of course I want to keep fans in the stands. But I also said that with each year we get farther away from Skip and don’t add to The Intimidator, that the “fans and experience” thing they reference becomes more myth and less real. We need to win the CWS soon bigly.

Winning breeds winning in every sport and the money will follow. But it’s kind of a chicken or egg thing in this discussion. What will get you there faster? Investing in the players and the things they have access to that give them a competitive advantage or investing in the fans who also give a different competitive advantage by the intimidating atmosphere for the visiting teams that they can provide, and keeping that hard-earned reputation handed down by our fathers of LSU fans being the best in baseball and maybe being the deciding factor in guys like Crews and White coming here instead of Vandy or FSU or wherever?