Goodbye to Champion Stadium as an official Stadium Visit

On a recent roadtrip I got to thinking about several things I wanted to clean up on the website. There have been a few tweaks I’ve wanted to make on the reviews and rankings and with more ideas coming to my mind, I figured now was as good of a time as any. Here are some of the changes that will occupy me for the next several months:

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- Rankings: I know these are quite subjective and don’t have all that much meaning to me, but there were a couple sections I wanted to change. I did one major change back in 2007 and had to re-rank everything, so I’ll be doing the same here. Also, now that I’ve seen many venues in multiple sports it helps to give a perspective when being able to compare a lot of facilities.

1) Made the Exterior worth 10 points instead of 14. When I first started doing these trips, I valued building architecture a little too much. I didn’t de-value the inside (14pts) because that I feel is the most important part of a stadium. Though first impressions are big, I think a bigger part of the stadium experience instead of the exterior is…….

2) Made the Atmosphere worth 14 points instead of 10. The atmosphere many times makes or breaks a stadium. Tullio Arena may be a dump, but I want to go back because of that atmosphere. I considered giving some points to fan support as the two can go hand in hand, but I felt that atmosphere is a much better gauge.

3) Renamed “Banners” to “Displays”. I used to reserve this to just the banners visible from where the playing surface is. Now, I see more and more stadiums with various plaques, statues, hall of fames and display cases. There was nowhere for me to put boost rankings for these, so I’ve started to count them in “Banners”, which changed to the better representative title of “Displays”

4) Changed the “Game” ranking to “Prestige”. I used a quality of the game ranking because I did this on a personal level for so many years. I always knew it was silly and irrelevant when judging the quality of the stadium experience, so I finally came up with a replacement. There was nowhere in the rankings that really gave credit to a historical venue. So I combined that, along with asking straight out “Do I want to come back?” for a “Prestige” category worth 5 points.

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- More Detailed Reviews: Starting with Citi Field, I went with a more detailed review, breaking down additional parts of the stadium trip. This became more time-consuming on my end, but I enjoyed giving a thorough overview of the whole stadium experience. So, I’ll be going back to do that with the previous 80+ reviews. This will be easier in the later years when I wrote more, but likely will become a struggle when I get to those first 30 venues or so, when I never really focused on things like cost, concourses and food. Obviously this will take a while, but I’m looking forward to going back as it will become well worth it. It also helps for consistency sake, which means I’ll also be fixing that top header to get rid of the game attendance, which I explained that sham here back in August.

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- Saying Goodbye to 3 Venues: I want to do this right and I think its time to say goodbye to three venues that I didn’t truly visit. The 21st visited stadium was Doubleday Field in Cooperstown. I was there to visit the Hall of Fame and while there, I went in to take a look at the stadium while an adult amateur league was going on. It of course was no game and I shouldn’t have counted it (shame on me). They will be removed from the Visits list. Luckily the Hawkeyes from the PGCBL now play there, so there’s still a chance to go have a real visit. The other two venues I removed were a couple places right next to each other in Lake Buena Vista, FL. While the MLB draft was going in the DisneyWorld complex, I saw Champion Stadium and HP Field House (formerly the Milk House). This was on my honeymoon and I have quite a loving wife who gave me an hour to see these two facilities. Now, obviously I didn’t see a game here and technically it is not a visit. Not sure why I included these three in the first place, maybe because I wanted to grow the number of stadiums seen? Regardless, I removed the visits and reviews from the website. This of course, screws up the number for each venue (ie. #91 Rentschler Field will now be #88 Rentschler Field), so that will take some cleaning up. It also means that the special #100 visit (Rhode Island’s Ryan Center) was actually #97. But I don’t care one bit, because in my eyes that is always #100.

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- More Pictures: OK, this post is starting to look like the back of a video game, which was not my initial intention. Anyway, each visit I usually take a couple dozen pictures, but I’ve only posted a few on the website, not knowing how much download space I have. Seeing as though I have a decent amount, I’ll be adding some to each review with the goal being 1 exterior shot, 1 concourse (absent in the earlier years),  and 4 or 5 interior shots. The last picture is something I just completed and that is an image of the program and ticket stub, of which I collect from each game.

Slowly, but surely I’m getting to the stadium reviews. Five new stadiums would take a lot of time, but when two of them are icons, woo there’s a lot to ponder, but I do like writing them. Anyway, we’ve been back a week and I’ve got Akron’s Canal Park and South Bend’s Notre Dame Stadium written and posted. Wrigley will be done soon and then hopefully the other two I’ll have done this weekend. I couldn’t get any work done yesterday as most of the day was celebrating that Bills win! (just kidding, I just watched some more football after jumping around the house for 15 minutes). The rest of the website updates (rankings, Youtube, visits) will be done shortly thereafter. I’ve also taken a peak at some of my older reviews and man they are basic. I would love to redo or update these, but I’m not sure how or when…though it is in the back of my mind. Last thing on this ramble is I want to thank some people that helped out on the trip: Ross Swaldo, Debra Jessup and Aaron Morse. Thank you!

Over the last year or so, I’ve taken more and more videos, while visiting stadiums, arenas and ballparks. There’s enough videos now that I decided to put them up on YouTube and they are available at the channel “stadiumandarenavisit” (they wouldn’t let me get that 21st character). You can check it out by clicking here or clicking “Videos” at the top. Most of the videos are taken from visits over the last year as I’ve gotten more in the habit of recording with my new camera. There are a few though when I began playing around with videos on my first digital camera in 2004. Hopefully it provides a nice prospective of the facility. Plus there are a few cool in-game moments I was lucky enough to catch…like that URI-Charlotte finish

I was unable to make it to HersheyPark Stadium this past weekend for the PIAA (Pennsylvania) High School Football championships as unfortunately, I had to work. I did venture into the state, to nearby Bethlehem’s Christkindlmarkt which was pretty cool. Anyway, I kind of expected this to be a tough go as December is always a difficult month to get in a new stadium as the last time I made it was in 2007 (Stony Brook Arena). As of now, I have no firm plans, but I would like to get to one of the following college basketball venues sometime in January: The Palestra (University of Pennsylvania), Liacouras Center (Temple University) or the very nearby Kirby Events Center in Easton (just added to The List when I  tweaked the seating capacity requirements down to 3,500). In February, I want to either get to another one of those venues or if I have a free weekend, get in a doubleheader on a road trip.

Also, I’m going through all the Stadium Reviews and making sure the pictures are clickable. Not sure, why they weren’t before, but I’m 2/3rds of the way done. The actual review part (which I’ve done in Word for years and then recently pasted them into the page) will be clickable too.

That’s about it…very interesting to see outdoor football again in Minneapolis last night. That video of the Metrodome roof collapse was incredible. 2011 will be intriguing in Minnesota since they’ve been pushing for a new stadium. Part of me is saddened, because that was my favorite NFL Dome venue. I thought the appearance inside was a little better than the others and that place can be deafening. Happy Holidays!

I can’t believe it’s been over a year since I started this webpage. It was quite a task to get a lot of the things I’ve created and collected online, but in my round-about, non-programmer way I was able to do most of it. One thing I left off was the Map file that I created in Microsoft Streets & Trips. This featured a pushpin on every city or town that had a Stadium on The List. Well, I’m just about finishing up putting images of those maps online and they can viewed here or by clicking “Maps” at the top. Of course, it took some creative thinking to put them on…one of these days I’ll try to a little bit more about web-programming. The maps are one of my favorite features, because it helps me greatly in trip planning and I hope you will find useful as well. Plus, I’m a geography nerd, another reason why I like it.

There are a couple other things I created that can be viewed by clicking the links at the top of the page as well. The “Reviews Reorganized” section was basically my way of making it easier for you to find the review you’re looking for. As my list of Stadiums visited grows, I realized some people may be looking for a specific stadium, their home city or their favorite team. Hopefully this section makes it better to navigate.

Lastly, in “Other Stadiums“, I wanted to display the stadiums that I have seen up close, but did not get the chance to attend a game. Additionally, you’ll find any venues that I attended games at, but were too small (and not significant enough) to make it onto The List.

Hope you enjoy the new features!

The Stadium List has been updated and the next few months will feature plenty of updates with baseball resuming play. Also soccer will be back and I know there will be a couple new soccer-specific stadiums opening, which is terrific! This list update was mainly for the unorganized chaos that is indoor football as most leagues start up in March. The new AFL begins in April. There were some casualties as the Albany Civic Center (Albany GA), Florence Civic Center (Florence SC) and DC Armory (Washington DC) have all disappeared from The List as they lost their respective indoor football team and I can’t find any other sporting events hosted. One great addition is the Cow Palace, the great old arena in the San Francisco area (Daly City) that now plays host to the San Jose Wolves.

I did fix up a few other things as Wichita’s sparkling new arena, Intrust Bank Arena is now open downtown. As a result, Britt Brown Arena which used to host the CHL’s Thunder will be closing and won’t be hosting any more sporting events. I also had one change that slipped through the cracks as Trenton changed their building name to Sun National Bank Center…ugh. That keeps my number at 16% of stadiums that I have visited have switched names. Let’s hope that percentage comes down soon.

Well it took a couple months, but The List of all arenas and stadiums underwent a major update. I went through and updated all of the Division I college facilities and many of the hockey leagues that resumed play. Not too many new arenas and stadiums, but there were quite a handful of capacity updates made. Still many webpages don’t list the capacity or they just have an approximation, but getting the correct number has become vastly improved since I started this whole thing. Also other teams were updated as the NBA and NBDL began play along with a few of the indoor soccer leagues. The next few months quiet down with not much in the way of resuming leagues as the next big update usually comes with the start of baseball in April.