40 Acres Sports

Wednesday’s storms hit UT athletic facilities. The softball field, Disch-Falk, and Moncrief-Neuhaus sustained minor damages.

The NCAA is trying a new set up for tournament games in football arenas and the games in Houston and Detroit this weekend will be fans’ first look at it. In order to get more fans in the stadiums, the courts will be set up at the fifty-yard line instead of tucked away to one side like the normal football stadium set up. When the Longhorns face off against the [tag]Stanford[/tag] Cardinal Friday evening at Reliant Stadium they’ll also do it from 27 inches off the ground.

The set up will allow them to sell more tickets and will look good on TV, but seems far from optimal for the players and coaches in the games. Both the location and elevation could actually affect the outcomes of these very important games. It could change things for shooters and on loose balls near the sideline.

The big drop just a few feet out of bounds is incredibly dangerous. Players are definitely worried about hustling after the basketball and falling off the edge, as evidenced by quotes like this one from Villanova’s Scottie Reynolds: “What if we go for the loose ball and dive off the court? I mean, that’s the thing I was scared about.” It seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

The large empty space behind each basket also may cause depth perception issues for shooters, something that would be a very bad for the guard-oriented Longhorns. There will be very few fans behind each basket, and each will be backdropped by large black curtains. On how the shooters would cope, our own [tag]AJ Abrams[/tag] said, “There’s going to be an obvious depth perception [problem] just from the goals, but nothing you can’t handle. Just go out and get a couple shots up and get the feel of it and that’s what it’s all about.”

Hopefully AJ can get comfortable during warm-ups and comes out firing during showtime. And maybe that homecourt advantage means we’ll have Texas fans lining the court to catch any Longhorns that go flying off the ledge. The best outcome is that nobody will get hurt and the final score of the games won’t be affected. We’ll find out Friday evening.

Related Links

• NCAA tries new-look location, elevation of courts in Detroit, Houston
• UTeric32’s (Hornfans) photos from Thursday’s shootaround
• Stanford vs. Texas on the big stage, literally
• ‘Falling off’ edge of court a worry

After several weather-related setbacks last summer, it looks like construction on Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium is now moving along nicely. Simkins over at HornFans has posted a ton of great photos that show the changes up close. The seating area in the North end zone looks almost done but the outside and innards of the stadium definitely still have a long way to go.

Check out the photos.

The latest DKR construction photos on HornFans. The outside is going to look a lot different when they’re done.

The Frank Erwin Center celebrates 30th anniversary. Maybe to celebrate some fans will actually show up for games?

DKR renovations are now only two weeks behind schedule. Rain this spring and early summer slowed things down but they’re catching back up.

I guess since the Cotton Bowl game won’t actually be in the Cotton Bowl anymore they’ve got to try anything to get some extra revenue to upgrade the stadium for one game a year. The latest idea? This Sunday people will be allowed to bring their dogs down on to the field to dump on the 50 yard line.

“Petsmart presents Texas’ largest dog park. A once in a lifetime opportunity to have dog owners and their dogs run free on the Cotton Bowl field. From 1-5pm on May 6 the Cotton Bowl will be open for dogs of all sizes to stomp, scamper and swish across the most historic playing field in Dallas.”

All kidding aside, I think it’ll be pretty cool just to get to go down on the field. Maybe you and your pooch can take the frisbee and reenact Vince Young to Billy Pittman for the TD. My mutt would spend the entire time trying to Bomar dogs five times her size.

More details

An Aggie writing in to the San Antonio Express-News‘ Richard Oliver claims that Kyle Field’s scoreboard was impotent smaller than DKR’s Godzillatron on purpose. Typical Aggie logic…

Not a question, but a fact: Texas A&M rolled out plans BEFORE the Longhorns to install the new scoreboard. It’s pretty obvious that the scoreboard at Kyle Field was well-planned, thus our avoidance of some oversized billboard like that in Austin.
– Mark Wildon, Houston

I was going to call him a moron, but he (or maybe Oliver) linked to Bevo Sports in his comment so I’ll refrain.

I distinctly remember learning about Texas’ new scoreboard before Texas A&M’s was announced. I remember Aggies on TexAgs being all excited when they heard about their MiniTron and then we linked them to details of Godzillatron to shut them up. Not sure of the exact time frame of any of this but it’s close enough and we clearly weren’t trying to copy them. We are the Joneses.

New 9-foot statue of the Texas legend will be at southwest corner of DKR.

If you are a fan of High Definition television, then you better make it to a Texas Longhorns home game this season. The Longhorns will be unveiling a new 134 ft x 55 ft (that is 7370 sq ft folks!) HD LED scoreboard, replacing the current 70 ft x 70 ft currently in place. And this is coming just a month after the Dolphins announced their new HD scoreboard, which at the was the world’s largest HD LED screen. Too bad for them they are about 400 sq ft short.

This addition is part of a large overhaul of DKR Texas Memorial Stadium, including $8 million in audio-visual improvements and $150 million to renovate the north end of the stadium to allow for 90,000+ in seating capacity.

Unfortunately the Longhorns will not be able to hold the title of having the world’s largest HD screen for very long, as a horse track in Tokyo has plans of installing a 197 ft screen sometime this year. Though I guess we can say we have the largest screen in the Western hemisphere.

Update: TexasSports now has a live webcam up of the construction of the scoreboard.

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