A Longhorn fan shares a call to arms. The full e-mail is after the jump, but basically, alums don’t want the Texas-OU game to leave Dallas. UT athletic director DeLoss Dodds might not care.
Here we go boys, DeLoss is once again focused on money and not the fans. He’s willing to trash decades of tradition and the preference of hundreds of thousands of alumni/fans to put a few more dollars in UT’s pocket. Even though I would prefer the OU -Texas game never leave the Cotton Bowl/Fair Park, I would still prefer it be held at the new Cowboy stadium vs home & home in order to preserve the unique, evenly divided format which adds so much to the nature of the rivalry. I hope you will join me in beginning a writing campaign to derail the proposal, both in Norman as well as Austin.
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A close friend of one of the Regents has told me that De Loss has requested permission from the Regents to make arrangements to move the OU game to a home & home series beginning in 2008. The principal reason is, of course, money. Here’s the deal:
· For the past several years, the City of Dallas has paid UT & OU several hundred thousand a year to keep the game at the State Fair. However, the Cotton Bowl needs to be renovated and expanded. With a new Cowboys stadium to open in Arlington in 2008, and the Cotton Bowl Game likely to move there for the retractable roof, the City will not be able to afford to renovate the Cotton Bowl for just one big game per year.
· Rather than move the series to the new Cowboys stadium in Arlington, UT prefers to move it to campus where it has greater profit opportunities. UT wants to expand DKR to 95,000, and the presence of another attractive home game would allow UT to increase the fees for skyboxes to fund for the project. There are over 500 reported to be on the waiting list for skyboxes now, and moving the OU game would add even more demand, which would be enough to also complete the south-end expansion and bring capacity to 115,000.
· It adds another attractive home game every other year, which would help offset lackluster non-conference games scheduled because of BCS seeding.
· Moving the game to a home & home strokes local business interests in Austin and Norman.
