What regent in his or her right mind would support spending a lot of public money on Stadium renovations when the NIL fall-out is still to be determined and our teams performance for the past decade has been well below average.
That doesn't mean they couldn't somehow downsize it, but leg room is so minimal now and is based on concrete forms, that making seats more comfortable will be very difficult and expensive. And there is nothing that says our football team is going to be important to anyone but our fans any time in the near future. And as for how many fans there are or will be, with each passing year and the phasing out of some of the stalwart older fans, those who want to pay up to see more losses than wins may diminish.
I think regent may have a hard time justifying heavy expenditures on renovating the stadium in light of the unknown financial situations they now face.
And those we think of as wealthy unnamed NU donors are probably going to take a deep breath before trying to compete with techie moguls or still wealthy oil and gas or merchandizing or financial whizes from other parts of the country on attracting the best players with money of one kind or another under NIL. The future is much too murky to confidently believe they are even in the game that will decide who the winners are.
Shrinkage can happen. Take a look at the large Ivy League stadiums (once the envy of every other college football team's athletic directors) that on Saturdays in the Fall now seat 5-10,000 people while their capacities at one point topped out at 100,000 at the Yale Bowl.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Yale_Bulldogs_football_team
https://www.thedp.com/article/2019/...line-college-clemson-princeton-franklin-field
Before you dismiss this as just the Ivy League, remember they once were the powerhouses of college football.
We are in trouble and hopefully someone can figure their way through what looks like a murky few upcoming years.