Wednesday, December 7, 2011

New stadium scoreboards could be on the way

The long-awaited dream of new scoreboards at Spartan Stadium could move one step forward on Friday.

According to the Detroit Free Press, the MSU Board of Trustees will be asked to approve the start of a planning process for an $8 million upgrade to the scoreboards and sound system on Friday. The current setup, which has one video board in the south end zone and a message board in the north end zone, was installed in 1998 and is outdated in comparison to most other Big Ten stadiums.

This summer, the image below began circulating around the internet about being a possible upgrade. But that image has a video board in the north end zone and MSU senior associate athletics director Greg Ianni told the Lansing State Journal much of the design has not been determined.


Ianni told the LSJ there would be "no comparison" to the current boards and that the new boards would be different than the new ones at Michigan Stadium.

Ianni said the hope is to have them done by the 2012 opener against Boise State, but there still are hurdles to get over. An important point from the Freep, the boards will be paid for by the athletic department. I think recent $1 million donations from Tom Izzo and Magic Johnson have helped bring this closer to reality.

The website that released the above rendering no longer has it up. Instead, a Spartan logo with "Coming Soon" is shown.

I think a larger video board should be in the north end zone. The north end zone stands hold the fewest amount of people and the sun usually is near the south end zone, sometimes making it hard to see the current board. A north end zone board would cover up some tree scenery, but the south end zone is affected more by wind, and I think it's a sacrifice fans would be willing to make.

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