terrapinsanity.com

This morning’s DB (Officials discuss Comcast upgrade) reports on administrative hopes to add about half a million bucks worth of steel rigging to the Comcast center. This would ostensibly support larger screens, speakers and other accouterments necessary to host Verizon Center or Patriot Center scale events. As reported, this infrastructure had been planned in the original build-out, but was dropped during implementation.

And let’s review one of the reasons why it was dropped: lack of such fixtures in the Comcast was not the sole barrier to having large events. After officials figured out that spending the extra cash would not bring them that much closer to having the regional-scale facility everyone wanted, the fixtures were dropped from the build to save cash. Spending on them now will throw good money after bad, increasing the thrash of athletic programs as they spiral in decline.

So what else was – and is – a barrier to large events? Infrastructure. We don’t have adequate parking or road capacity to carry daily traffic now, much less the present level of events. We must banish staff and graduate students from campus – or at least tow their cars – in order to make room for some pathetic level of tailgating like we are one of the big schools. And good luck getting to work on time, or leaving at end of the day, during the seasons when Comcast is rented out to, say, high school graduations. That can be a very unpleasant hour-long ordeal.

And these people think spending half a million on rigging for bigger screens will make things right?

The increased congestion on Route 1 and 193 (itself the product of county officials basing their planning on cash, not throughput) isn’t going to get any better. Thinking ahead, the Purple Line coming through campus ought to make foot-traffic from outer parking areas to Byrd Stadium truly special. (Presumably we can be like the Redskins, where fans park in one city in order to take public transit to the games. Great alumni experience there.) Maybe there is something a lot better that can be funded by this cash.