When I was at UTSA, I was against the football program... oh well. It will bring more interest to campus, but I didn't want the extra construction, expense, etc. Of course, the new Texas A&M is being built on the South side and they have a lot more physical space out there, so I wouldn't be surprised if they plan for it... right now it's temporary buildings out there on or near the Palo Alto campus, etc. (I almost worked for them last year.)
A link to said rendering: http://www.tamuk.edu/sanantonio/images/renderings/stadiumlogo.gif Interesting that TAMU-SA is apparently being built to look like a shopping center.
wow, that looks so crowded. I don't like all the buildings going right up to the street. They've got lots of space down on that end of town. It needs to look like a campus. Besides, whether they like it or not, most people will have cars and need to park them somewhere.
And Scott Bakula will be the starting QB; with Sinbad as a jive-talking physics professor/defensive tackle, and Louis Mandylor as an Australian ex-rugby player. I wonder if Coker will keep raspy-voiced Hector Elizondo and gravely-voiced Robert Loggia on the coaching staff.
As U of H's perennially insolvent Athletic department can attest, UTSA could easily end up losing money on this. But I think alot of Presidents and Chancellors would claim that sports programs have a strange way of raising a school's profile and attracting more applicants. Shamefully enough, I never even thought of going to a college that didn't have some kind of D-1 sports program. That was completely idiotic in retrospect, but maybe not as rare as you'd think for a typical college applicant. Plus, it seems possible that San Antonio may never get an NFL team; so there's probably some kind of cash to be made there, or at least an opporunity to better identify with the City.
My sister takes some grad classes there - it's a commuter school without a ton of resources, they're going to have pour tons and tons of money into it just to be a laughingstock for a decade, sounds like a bad investment to me.
I've lived in Texas virtually my whole life and as odd as it sounds, I wasn't even aware that schools like UTSA, SWT, Sam Houston, SFA, and Lamar let alone schools like Angelo State, Sul Ross State, Abilene Christian or Tarleton State even existed until I was already in college. I ended up transferring to Texas State after 2 years but I had never heard of it (or SWT) until almost a year before then. It's not he best barometer of a school, but playing I-A football has a huge impact on making people aware your school exists. How many people are aware of Florida International, Middle Tennessee St., or Alabama - Birmingham just because they play I-A football?
If done right, it's possible. South Florida was a startup program not too long ago. They spent 4 years in I-AA then moved up to I-A, spent 2 years as an independent and then joined CUSA. They spent 2 years there and then, after only having football for 8 years, jumped to the Big East. But USF has about 7 times the endowment that UTSA does.
3,000 students live on campus and another 5,000 live within a mile of campus. There are 6 or 7 apartment complexes all right there that cater to the UTSA students. It is shedding the commuter school image, and a football program and boosted up Athletic complex off of Hausman and 1604 will add value to its Athletic dept. Give it time man, the school has way too much local support to not give it a try and see what happens with the program. Bringing in a coach like Coker will hopefully prevent the program from being a laughingstock for a decade.
I assume they'll put the student parking lots on the outside perimeter, making the campus more walkable and running buses if need be. Which is how a lot of colleges I've been to (and yes, I've been enrolled at and taken classes at nine different colleges or universities on 12 different campuses over the years*) are designed (though usually not quite as mall-like). The mall close to my house (Firewheel Town Center in Garland) looks a lot like the renderings, actually. (The colleges are: Amarillo College, Texas Tech, West Texas A&M, Baylor, University of North Texas, University of Texas at Arlington, Collin County Community College, Grayson County College and Texas A&M-Commerce, in case anyone wanted to know).
