- August 22nd, 2010, 9:14 am
#314702
Hey Flames, read through this thread, thought I would address some of the questions that have been brought up and give you some general planning ideas for what to expect in Harrisonburg,
1) Love your renovations, upperdeck and press box/suites building. Looks great. Also look forward to your next phase. Hopefully I can actually see the stadium and game through the rain next year when we return.
2) JMU only supplies 1000 tickets to each opponent following the CAA guidlines. The game is sold out on our side. Some tickets will appear on Stubhub usually for over sticker-price...depending on how badly we lose to VaTech with determine how many show up for resale.
3) I disagree with where we (JMU) place the visiting team fans. We try to give you respectable seats to be nice but you end up being placed next to the students/young alumni/townie fans and our band. Some of you will be put in the endzone sections A or B and others will be put in Sections 6,7,8 I think. To have a buffer from our rowdy fans (me being one) I would request for your ticket to be in section 7. If you are in sections 6-8 request the highest row possible for better sight-lines (only 26 rows there, the higher the better because it is still low).
4) Glad your band is coming, always fun to have dueling bands! Bands add so much to college football too!
5) driving is easy, only 16,000 seats or so for this year, unless you show up right around kickoff traffic flows as well as anywhere I have been to games.
6) do get to the stadium a little early though. Not that many ticket entry spots and the people scanning the tickets take forever sometimes...allow time to get in your seat. Also, I like to be seated with 25 minutes on the countdown clock to see the band pregame, get comfy, etc.
7) We have one of the best tailgate scenes in 1AA - took a Florida graduate to a game last year who has been in grad school at UVA for the past 2 years and he said "Now this is tailgating" at our game. The tailgating lots right around the stadium are mostly older mature alumni who do it up big but won't be jerks as you are forced to walk by them to get to the stadium. You will get friendly/jokingly banter and meant as fun remarks said to you maybe, but go along with it, strike up a conversation and you will end up with free food and a handshake. Students and young more heated alumni will be tailgating what we call c-4 lot, by some tennis courts, student lot by our old baseball stadium across from C-4, a lot across from campus and Port Republic and the Convo lots which is our baseball stadium convo a-f or something like that. Th free lots are the convo c-f or so, the lot across port republic, lots up by the east campus library, science buildings etc on the part of campus east of I81. I think there is also a parking garage by our new music complex you can park in at the end of our quad (warsaw parking deck). If you want to tailgate and spread out and not worry about drunk students and young alumni I would go to the east campus (non convo) lots. If you want to take a stab at having fun with jmu fans the best free lot is the Convo lots. There are buses that run for free from the east campus lots and possibly the warsaw deck/quad area to the stadium before and after the game. Also, bring a trash bag, put your trash in it and just leave it behind your car and JMU comes around and picks up your trash for free during the game so you don't have to carry it somewhere and it is gone and clean when you return after the game. There is a lot of good info on tailgating and parking on our website.
8)Our stadium is under construction this year, only a couple hundred more seats than last year, kickoff 12 months from now is when our phase 1 will actually be complete. This year there will not be anything that really impresses you, comparable to Williams before your current renovation. Walk over to the home stands and under the concourse under those stands will give you a feel of how nice bridgeforth will be in august 2011. In august 2011 the top row of seats will be 135 feet high (20 feet higher than the top our our current lights) and a few feet shorter than VaTech's tall side with suites a finished club etc. Also, we still have our old scoreboard that we call our mini-tron. Again in august 2011 our new scoreboard will be moved over our fieldhouse, will be hi-def like yours and the screen will be 6 feet taller and 11 feet wider than your new one (I LOVE your new one though, ours will be bigger but yours will still be awesome). We will also be getting a new sound system in 2011 so again sorry deal with ours for this year.
9) We throw streamers after scores, tradition from our glory days of basketball when we routinely went to the sweet 16, started again at football games in 2004, sorry if you get hit by some, just have fun and smile about it, it is fun.
10) We have a great bookstore in the Godwin Hall parking lot also known as G-lot right outside the stadium if you like souveniers (can't spell).
Hope this helps in some way. I hope we destroy you guys (without injuring anyone on either team) but best of luck to you! Mike Brown puts the fear of God in me, why don't you let him stay home and take a nap or something for the game!
Beat Ball State and use your Liberty connections with the big guy in the sky to pray for our kids when we play VaTech the week before we play you.
The local paper said that the season was almost all sold out... except for UMass and the "opener" game...
--Fumble (1961-2009), RIP
). Sly, I still visist the site quite a bit. I just don't post as much.
- By thecomeback
5 of them!
- By jmclaughlin