*It’s that time of year again for college football fans. What bowl is your team going to? There are so many now that it’s no longer an acknowledged barometer of a successful season. Teams with non-winning seasons go every year. But what does it mean if your team is not going bowling? Ouch.
Well, remember when we regularly criticized USF’s Jim Leavitt for not being able to get his team to “the next level”? As in, do something other than lead the Bulls to another 8-4, Big East also-ran season culminating in one of the myriad of nondescript, non-BCS bowls.
Imagine, the Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte against East Carolina as the good old days. Ouch.
* Can’t say the Tampa Bay Rays, who are last in Major League Baseball attendance, aren’t still trying. The team is anteing up some $700,000 for renovations to the Trop. The major project will create a 360-degree walkway around the lower bowl–adding new vantage points for those who do show up.
Plans call for the removal of about 3,000 seats to effect the change, dropping capacity from 34,000 to 31,000. Smaller stadiums are also part of a baseball trend–although 31,000 is more than 4,000 fewer seats than the next smallest–Oakland’s O.co Coliseum.
The bottom line? While some may see any investment in such an obsolete, poorly-located facility as throwing good money after bad, the Rays see value in making the best of it. They know that–given market conditions and best-case construction schedules–they can count on playing at the Trop for a few more years.