– I’m off to Florida next weekend, so this may be the last post for awhile. We’ll be splitting time between Deerfield Beach (just North of Fort Lauderdale) and Orlando with three new stadiums on the docket: Jupiter’s Roger Dean Stadium, UCF’s Bright House Networks Stadium and Port St. Lucie’s Digital Domain Park. Look for a wrap-up in a few weeks. Let’s hope that heavy downpours stay away during those games!
– Speaking of schedules, unfortunately my New England trip isn’t going to happen. In theory, it seemed like a good idea, but there were certain logistics that just ended up not working out. Glad, I didn’t go ahead and drop $75 – $100 on the most expensive tickets in the NFL. I am still unsure of what/where I’ll be going the weekend of 9-25 / 9-26. But it will be somewhere. I did want to make a multi-stadium weekend trip, however September is the worst month for that since it’s only football and MLB playing. There weren’t any combinations within a decent driving distance, so I’m leaning towards my long awaited visit to Rutgers Stadium (for Rutgers-North Carolina).
– The weekend before (9-18 / 9-19), I’ll be in Rochester and am trying to sneak out of work early on Friday, so I can make the Rhinos soccer game at Marina Auto Stadium. I also don’t want to go another year without seeing an NFL stadium, so I’ve been toying with the thought of driving to Cleveland to see a Browns game as I have that following Monday off. It’s a far-fetched thought….check the Schedule page for updates
– Over the next month, I’ll be updating the Stadium List as a lot of leagues return to action. After having a set minimum capacity requirement for over 10 years, I decided to make a little adjustment and move the arena minimum seating from 4,000 to 3,500. The reason is that I’m seeing more and more arenas built that are pretty nice, but fall in that 3500 – 4000 range. Places like Quinnipiac’s TD BankNorth Center (college basketball) and Lewiston’s Androscoggin Bank Colisée (QMJHL) would now be included. I also wanted to include more of the Canadian Junior Hockey buildings that were left off. In the beginning, I set up these requirements to make the list easier to maintain and to exclude facilities that were just some bleachers and a plain building. For example, if I include Coastal Carolina University’s Kimball Arena (seating 1037), then should every high school gym over 1000 be listed? Same type of deal with football stadiums. Anyway, that’s the reason for the standards and after some consideration, I felt it was time to include some nice facilities that were previously excluded.
– Here’s a pretty good story from the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle: http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20100822/SPORTS/8220337/1007/SPORTS/Batavia-Muckdogs-might-be-down-to-final-outs. It’s regarding the future of the Batavia Muckdogs who play baseball in the NY-Penn League. Batavia is the smallest city in affiliated baseball (population ~ 15,000) and is in danger of losing their team after 70+ years. I am a sucker for small-markets in sports and am always saddened to hear when any community loses their franchise. It would be great to see more fans come out and sell out the 2500 seat ballpark to at least show their support and effort to try and keep the Muckdogs.
Stadium and Arena Visits 