FBC Mortgage Stadium

September 4, 2010
Bright House Networks Stadium (Capacity: 45,301)
Orlando, FL
UCF Knights vs South Dakota Coyotes
Final Score: 38 – 7

* The stadium has been renamed FBC Mortgage Stadium

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Orlando is the state’s fourth-largest city with a population of 238,000 and it has been rapidly growing for decades. There’s plenty of nightlife and other entertainment for residents, but of course the area is known for the many theme parks and attractions along International Drive that make this one of the most popular travel destinations in the world. After spending time further south, we made the 3-hour drive to visit Central Florida for four days, where we spent most of our time at Universal Studios, SeaWorld and the Aquatica waterpark. On Saturday, we drove to the other side of Orlando to the University of Central Florida for a visit to their football stadium. UCF is surprisingly the third largest college in the country with over 50,000 undergraduates. It is a young (started in 1963) and remarkably modern school with a huge, technologically advanced campus that features over 200 different degrees. Their athletic teams are known as the Knights and they became Division I in 1984 and I-A for football in 1996. They have settled into Conference USA since 2005 and for a young program, have had some successful seasons, winning a conference title and appearing in three bowl games. After playing in the oversized Florida Citrus Bowl near downtown for several years, the school built the on-campus Bright House Networks Stadium in 2007. It’s a basic stadium, but this trip was a rare one where it seemed a lot of little things went wrong.
Prestige Ranking: 3 out of 5

Location

UCF lies to the east-northeast of Orlando and it’s on the outskirts of the city, about 40 minutes from Disney/Universal and 25 minutes from downtown. The core of downtown is the Central Business District and the beautiful fountain of Lake Eola. Outside of grabbing a swan boat on the lake, the area is best visited in the evening as there is plenty of nightlife. UCF owns a lot land and it is at the center of a more spaced out commercial / residential area. Campus features modern and architecturally upscale learning buildings. Milican Hall and the nearby fountain in the reflecting pond is a nice sight. The stadium itself is located in the North End and part of a new area called “Knights Plaza”, which includes UCF Arena amongst other athletic venues and student housing. The main street through the plaza is really nice with a strip of stores and counter-service food joints. There are a couple restaurants as well that looked pretty good. The street is decorated with overhanging lights and the buildings are appealing.
Location Ranking: 7.5 out of 10

Accessibility / Parking

Driving north through Orlando was annoying as we had to pay two tolls in a landlocked city. UCF is huge and we had quite a tour of it because general parking in the Red and Blue lots is situated on the opposite side of campus from where the stadium is. Traffic for us an hour and a half before game-time was non-exist, however as the city continues to grow, occasional congestion increases. The parking garages were right off the entry roads and were simple to navigate. The painpoint was the walk to and from the stadium. It was brutally hot (94 degrees and sunny) to start the nearly 1 mile trek that eventually took us through the tailgating on Memory Mall. Walking back, we got lost trying to find the correct garage, despite having a campus map.
Accessibility / Parking Ranking: 5.5 out of 8

Exterior

Fans arrive to the stadium using a well-landscaped walkway and if entering through the front entrance, they will pass a statue of “The Charging Knight”. The only real design that one sees on the outside is the back of the Roth Tower (which has the press box and suites) and is painted white with the stadium logo and name at the top. You can walk around the entire stadium, but all you see are brick columns that support the seating bowl. There are two sections for tickets and each only has four windows (more on this debacle later).
Exterior Ranking: 5 out of 10

Concourse

The concourse is quite wide and it circles the entire stadium on the lowest level. It is somewhat open to the outside elements and supported by brick columns with not much else to speak of.
Concourse Ranking: 3 out of 5

Food

Food has some variation with barbeque pork, steak pitas and sausage sandwiches amongst some of the items that stood out. However, the food was nasty as my wife had a burger that was awful and I had a steak pita that was inedible. I docked three points for that.
Food Ranking: 3 out of 8

Interior

The exterior and the concourses give the vibe that this is a plain stadium as everything seems simple with uniform colors and no special design elements. The inside continues the trend. Bright House Networks Stadium is a completely enclosed, one-level stadium split by a walkway. It’s a rounded rectangular shape that follows the football field with the corners gently angled to set up better sightlines. Just about all of the seats are bleachers with a few gold seats towards the top of the bowl on the west side. Sideline bleachers have backs to them. There is a walkway that surrounds the top (which I really liked for my picture taking). The venue is intimate as the seating, especially in that first level, is quite close to the field. The four-level Roth Tower sits above the west side of the stadium and houses the press box, football offices, 24 suites and a club lounge.
Interior Ranking: 7.5 out of 14

Scoreboard

At the north end of the stadium is a black, rectangular scoreboard providing basic game information on the left and clear HD video on the right (ads make up the sides). At the top is a small school logo and “UCF Knights” spelled out. There’s also a small board on the other end displaying game information.
Scoreboard Ranking: 3 out of 4

Displays

Aside from the charging knight in front of the stadium, there really is not much here. On the field, the end zone wall displays “2007 C-USA Champions” along with logos of the bowl games the school has attended. Also, I believe Daunte Culpepper’s #8 is retired, but I did not see any banners for numbers.
Displays Ranking: 1.5 out of 6

Cost

Well, first let me get the easy stuff out of the way. Parking was free (yay!), programs were $5 and food was average to slightly high ($6 for a burger, $4 for jumbo hot dog, $3 for Pepsi). Tickets were a crock. Earlier in the month, UCF put out a news release saying ALL tickets for the South Dakota game were $25. When I went to go buy them through their website, I found eight pricing structures ranging from $25 to $130. Come to find out that it’s only selected (meaning upper corner and upper end) seats that were $25. So the pricing is fine, their language and abundance of higher priced seats is not.
Cost Ranking: 6 out of 8

Fan Support

Attendance during the life of Bright House Networks Stadium has been decent with UCF ranking second in the conference. Given the size of the school and the market, UCF should have more sellouts than they do (limited to just games against Miami, USF and Texas. I do understand though that the state has 3 big-time programs. Our game featured about 70% of the stadium being filled and for the season opener against an FCS school, that ain’t bad.
Fan Support Ranking: 6 out of 8

Atmosphere

The tailgating scene was pretty solid. Scattered around grassy areas were random tailgaters, while the main tailgating was actually on campus and set up by UCF, which was surprising. That didn’t mean it was tame as UCF lived up to the billing as being a party school. It takes place on a large, rectangular grassy section known as Memory Mall with the school setting up tents and the fans doing the rest.  Inside the stadium, the student section was quite full and fans were really looking forward to football season. They were loud at the right times, despite the quality of the opponent and the noise factor was great. Some of their cheers included playing the “Hey” song and shouting “U….C….F….Knights”. After each first down, the PA announcer shouts: “Good for a Knights…” followed by fans pointing and yelling “First Down”. By far their most popular tradition is the playing of “Zombie Nation” and fans jumping up and down. Even though this has become cliché with a lot of teams doing it, it was great to see non-student fans joining in and doing it. Plus, because the stadium is aluminum and steel, the upper section literally bounced during it, which was pretty sweet. Fans were all attentive, talking UCF football and I even heard a couple talking about the upcoming East Carolina-Tulsa game (two C-USA teams).
Atmosphere Ranking: 10.5 out of 14

Other Stuff

This was a trip that just didn’t seem to go right, which has been thankfully rare in prior stadium visits. I ordered my tickets, only to not have them arrive at my house the week before we flew to Florida. The ticket office told me they would be there by Friday (the day before I left), which they weren’t. They then just cancelled the tickets and held them at Will Call, which is fine, no problem at all there. At the game, there is no ticket window that says “Will Call”, so after walking the stadium to try to find it (not fun after already walking a mile in the 95 degree heat), I was told to wait in the regular ticket line…which had four windows and tripled in wait time. After finally getting up there and them taking a long time to find the tickets, we exhaustedly made it inside. Other bad luck events included me searching endlessly for personal pizza that people had but sold out of, spilling ketchup all over my leg, getting lost back to the parking garage and then the elevator breaking down, waiting in the drive-thru at Sonic for 20 minutes with just three cars in line and then lastly getting back to the hotel only to see a bus-load of teenage “steppers” get off at the same time and follow us to our floor. Looking back, it’s comical and every once in awhile you have to have a trip like that happen.

Game

As expected, UCF routed FBS opponent South Dakota. During the second quarter, South Dakota cut the lead to 14-7 and recovered a UCF fumble in their territory, but a penalty negated the call and the Knights never looked back as they went up 24-7 by halftime. Rob Calabrese was 12/15 passing for 176 yards and 1 TD as UCF piled up 27 first downs during the game.  

Stadium Experience Ranking: 61.5 out of 100