Yep they sure love their football in Texas. Allen Texas is set to open it's brad new $60 Mil stadium this fall on Aug 31st against the Defending state champs. Yes you read the price correctly. The stadium looks like better then some D2 College football stadiums. Pro facility with a huge Scoreboard. Lux box, and 18.500 seats. In the end they'll have 8,000 season Ticket holders.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/08/dallas-suburb-unveils-new_n_1756434.html#slide=1349579

penn state isn't the only place with a football culture problem.

Did I ever say it was? This isn't even the biggest football stadium HS wise there.

That's insane. My school put a few mil into a new football field I think. It's a nice turf field, but our team <sucks. Only 2 wins this year, the same as the previous 4 years combined.

When my two neighbors who I became friendly with who are 3 yrs older then me went to HS they won 1 game their whole time there and that was my first year. My class had the most wins by the time we finished overall in 10 or so yrs at the time to. My buddy who broke all the state rushing records (Only to have them broken 2 yrs later) was once knocked out by Mark Herzlich. Oh and our "stadium" s*cks compared to most of the other schools in the area. The field grass is in horrible condition and the only thing they fixed was the track surrounding the field and new bleacher seats on the home side.

Friday Night Lights!

We have, by far, the nicest field in the conference, maybe even south Jersey (I don't know I've only seen fields of places in our conference and places where we do track and stuff). But it's beautiful. Beautiful field, beautiful track, everything. Our baseball field <sucks, though, and they just redid them (but they only did that to build a new parking lot, so they had to move the fields). We have one set of bleachers and we're playing in a pit that gets flooded due to it being below the street and next to a retention pond. It's funny because baseball is our one good sport (and now tennis because my friend is a beast. Won Gloucester County Tennis Player of the Year as a freshman).

One of my leagues for Baseball had a similar field flooding problem. My dad and many of the other coaches use to get shop vacs, brooms, buckets, shovels, etc to clean the field off of water then put new dry dirt on it. It was a huge pain too but it was kind of fun to help because you felt like you were part of a grounds crew and what not.

Wow. I know HS football is huge in that part of the country but dang! Our Town's HS still plays on grass & dirt.

Do you go to Gateway HS by any chance?

I should mention an Art Building or something like that went up with it. it was an art/music department thingy I believe.

The last time my high school football team was ever really good was when I was 12 years old in the beginning of the 7th grade. I'm 19 years old now. They won the first round of the playoffs in easy fashion and they were the favorites to win in the second round against a team they absolutely crushed in the regular season.

Unfortunately, half of the high school football team--especially almost all of the starters--were caught drinking alcohol and they were banned from playing the rest of the playoffs and they let everyone in my hometown down. My team would go on to lose very badly in the next round with a severely depleted lineup so yeah.

yes, are you a former gator alumnus?

I lived near Odessa, Texas for six months...that is where the book and tv show Friday Night Lights was based. The whole town shows up for football games. It means more than pro and college ball for most of these places. They usually play the high school championship games at Cowboy Stadium. They love their football there.

The stadium I played in high school was beautiful and is still in use today except they took down the old 'H' style goal posts and replaces them with the modern ones. The field itself was like playing on a plus carpet the grass was so thick and lush. I miss those days.

"penn state isn't the only place with a football culture problem. "

Agreed. That's disgusting. Couldn't they have built a lab or a library instead?

18,000+ don't go to the library there, however, that stadium will be filled every game. High school football in Texas is more lucrative than minor league baseball. Think about the revenue. 18,500 X $5.00 per game = $92,000 per game in ticket sales alone(I'm guessing at the $5 price, just giving an example). $920,000 per season not counting playoffs and other things going on at the stadium. From the article, this is a suburb of Dallas and it's a money town($85K median income). Kudos to them though. I wish we got 2,000 per game let alone 18K.

***yes, are you a former gator alumnus? ***

I suppose I'll admit so. I grew up in Westville.

****18,000+ don't go to the library there, however, that stadium will be filled every game. High school football in Texas is more lucrative than minor league baseball. Think about the revenue. 18,500 X $5.00 per game = $92,000 per game in ticket sales alone(I'm guessing at the $5 price, just giving an example). $920,000 per season not counting playoffs and other things going on at the stadium. From the article, this is a suburb of Dallas and it's a money town($85K median income). Kudos to them though. I wish we got 2,000 per game let alone 18K. *****

It'll only take 65 years to break even on the stadium!

According to the Allen School District website, season tix are available for $8 each and the Allen Eagles only have 5 home games this year and indeed most years, since they usually participate in some type of out of state games against other top schools, etc. 19,500 * $8 * 5... That translates to $740,000 in revenue per year, meaning the payback period on the stadium would be 81.081 years. Of course, that's not considering concession costs, but it is also not considering the astronomical upkeep costs of a stadium like this. Many college programs have upkeep costs in the millions.

I think it's safe to say that this new stadium wasn't an investment, but rather a show of a town's and the town's citizens' commitment to football. They may never get their money back, but their school football team has a shiny new place to play.

_________________

That being said, I'm sure the school and the school's attendees are all happy. This didn't come out of a $60M school fund or something, the money was specially appropriated via a town vote to issue over $100M in bonds to pay for the stadium (among other things). The issuance of those bonds will no doubt result in tax increases.

But at any rate, it's sad to say, but if you tried to get the town to vote to appropriate even $5M to a library, it'd be shot down. Or $10M to a program to improve education... that would be shot down too.

So it's not like this money really could've been put to better use. If it wasn't football related, the townspeople wouldn't have voted "yes".

And as a potential positive, whatever money is made from the stadium (more profits than from the prior stadium for certain) will go back into the school district and the administrators get to decide what to do with it. I for one hope they decide to put some back into education, but I guess we'll see...