Despite a report that Temple was putting on hold its feasibility study for a new football stadium, Philly.com reports they’re still pursing it:
A source said that Temple is putting its full efforts into working with the community, considered one of the major obstacles of building the $130 million on-campus stadium.
If Temple doesn’t get the cooperation of the neighborhoods, then a feasibility study, which is budgeted for $1.25 million, becomes unnecessary.
But does that mean things are sailing along smoothly? Absolutely not.
Two Temple sources have said throughout the process that they knew it would be a challenging task to work with the neighborhoods on an agreement. There are many other challenges in getting this project done, not the least of which is fund raising.
$130 million for Temple to build a football stadium that they’ll play in six times per year in a part of the city no one wants to go to. I CAN’T IMAGINE WHY COLLEGE TUITION COSTS ARE SKYROCKETING DISPROPORTIONATELY TO, WELL, EVERYTHING ELSE IN AMERICA.
Can I make this a Villanova post? You bet I can!
After winning the National Championship, Villanova received a donation for $22.6 million from William Finneran to renovate the Pavilion, which is awful and sorely in need of renovation. I’m all for it. One could argue that makes me a hypocrite, but there’s a huge difference between renovating an arena that will forever be too small for its occupant to make it at least viable… and building a football stadium in North Philly for a program that peaked when it eeked into the top 25 for, like, a week in 2015, just lost its coach, and hasn’t had less than four losses in a season since 1979(!!!). Their deal with the Linc sucks, but it’s more or less the best option they have. Temple doesn’t need its own stadium. And they probably wouldn’t be able to fill it anyway. The proposed stadium, in North Philly, would have 35,000 seats. Not once this season – one of Temple’s best, which resulted in a bowl loss – did Temple get 35,000 fans for a home game. In fact, they only surpassed 30k once– a 28-3 loss to Army on September 2. The basketball program, which is generally better and more respected than the football program, doesn’t even come close to filling its outstanding arena on a regular basis, so why would football be any different?
Temple says the stadium would also be used for high school games and community events, and they claim they don’t want to use tuition dollars to pay for the proposed stadium. But that sounds a lot like NFL owners saying they don’t want to use taxpayer dollars for their stadiums and then the city winds up footing the entire bill. Temple cites similar sized stadiums (stadii?) in the AAC in Cincy, Houston and East Carolina as examples of why their plan could work, but those are all in more college-friendly markets and cities without four pro sports teams. Philly is simply not a great college sports town, and it’s a downright bad college football town.
I’m just blown away that Temple, despite basically no one thinking this is a good idea, continues to pursue the stadium at all costs.
