Claeys said he is open to the Gophers playing a game in the Vikings’ new home

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GAME AT U.S. BANK STADIUM?

After U.S. Bank Stadium was packed with 64,101 fans Wednesday for an international soccer match, Claeys said he is open to the Gophers playing a game in the Vikings’ new home — if circumstances line up.

Claeys doesn’t want to take home games away from on-campus TCF Bank Stadium after the program had to call the Metronome home from 1982-2008. TCF Bank Stadium has been the Gophers’ home since 2009.

“It’s a great stadium, and so I would hate to take away anything from our own campus,” Claeys said.

But the caveats are if U.S. Bank Stadium is awarded the College Football Playoff title game and if it can be an extra nonconference game for Minnesota.

“I think that would be a neat scenario for everybody involved as long as we didn’t lose a game at TCF,” Claeys said.

http://www.twincities.com/2016/08/0...g-georgia-rbs-together-u-s-bank-stadium-game/

Go Gophers!!
 




I would only support it if it was against a helmet school.

Honestly, with the 9 game conference schedule, I'm surprised he would be open to an extra NC game. It doesn't sound like a good idea. Is that comment suggesting that he'd willingly play an entire season without a bye week? Or does extra NC game mean something else?
 





Not what I understand him to be saying...

mnsportsgeek said:
I would only support it if it was against a helmet school.

Honestly, with the 9 game conference schedule, I'm surprised he would be open to an extra NC game. It doesn't sound like a good idea. Is that comment suggesting that he'd willingly play an entire season without a bye week? Or does extra NC game mean something else?
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Something else, I believe: “It’s a great stadium, and so I would hate to take away anything from our own campus,” Claeys said.

But the caveats are if U.S. Bank Stadium is awarded the College Football Playoff title game and if it can be an extra nonconference game for Minnesota.

“I think that would be a neat scenario for everybody involved as long as we didn’t lose a game at TCF,” Claeys said.

In November 2015, the national championship was awarded to New Orleans over Minnesota. The Vikings and the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority have since shifted the focus to possibly hosting games in 2021 and 2022 season.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin will open the 2016 season against Louisiana State on Sept. 3 at the Packers’ Lambeau Field in Green Bay.
 



Our rivalry home games against Wisconsin at the end of the season, we'd like to play that at TCF. Blizzard or no blizzard.

Maybe a preseason game?
 

I would love to see the non conference "away" game played at US Bank Stadium.
 


The best use of US Bank Stadium, should the U of M ever go that route, would be to make it an early season non conference game against a major Big 12 or SEC team like Oklahoma or Texas A&M, that would have gate appeal to locals, bring traveling fans, have local armchair fans, would have to be guaranteed a significant sum for playing, and be frankly unlikely to come to TCF Bank Stadium. Iowa State would also make a good deal of sense. They aren't big time, but it's an easy drive and they have alumni here. Holding a game downtown for a visit from Missouri or Texas Tech would be a big mistake, however. This can also only be done once over a long time span, because the novelty of the venue is part of the hook. You can't go back in after two years and draw or when the venue is a decade old and everyone who wanted to see it has.

One other option is to lure Notre Dame to US Bank Stadium for a Shamrock Series game. It would technically be a road game for the Gophers, but the U of M would get a big guarantee and still have the band and significant fan support on hand.
 



I would take a non conference game there against a power 5 team. The TCU game would have been fun there or something like that. But then that would require us to play another top 10 team in the non conference. If Wisconsin continues to be the last game of the season I'd take the Wisconsin game there next year... although that would just mean more tickets available for Wisconsin fans to make it their home crowd. Basically I'd be cool with it as long as we can sell it out.

On a side note, I went to the soccer game there Wednesday and although the stadium looked great and had all the bells and whistles it's functionality design is seriously a F-. Concourses half the size they need to be, bathrooms poorly designed, impossible to move around the stadium unless the game was going on. I'm talking worse than TCF bank during the last wisconsin game... It was very disappointing. So with that said, I'm cool if we stick to our awesome on campus stadium or schedule a neutral site game some place else.
 

bottlebass said:
I would take a non conference game there against a power 5 team. The TCU game would have been fun there or something like that. But then that would require us to play another top 10 team in the non conference. If Wisconsin continues to be the last game of the season I'd take the Wisconsin game there next year... although that would just mean more tickets available for Wisconsin fans to make it their home crowd. Basically I'd be cool with it as long as we can sell it out.

On a side note, I went to the soccer game there Wednesday and although the stadium looked great and had all the bells and whistles it's functionality design is seriously a F-. Concourses half the size they need to be, bathrooms poorly designed, impossible to move around the stadium unless the game was going on. I'm talking worse than TCF bank during the last wisconsin game... It was very disappointing. So with that said, I'm cool if we stick to our awesome on campus stadium or schedule a neutral site game some place else.
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I was there too, ditto. The outside and roof are amazing, everything else, meh. Bathroom by my seat had 8 urinals...8. Line was gigantic. Had to go up a level and walk to find one without a huge line. Gray and pretty drab inside. Concourses are not that wide and narrow in odd places that cause huge bottlenecks...concessions placed in bad spots that also narrow the concourses...any lines there and it was pretty slow to pass. I'll take TCF 10 out of 10 times.

When I said an Away/Away with Hawaii earlier, I meant both games there. Schedule it like the SEC cream puff week or put it after Wisc.
 

If LSU can be convinced to go up to Lambeau without a return game I suppose a top 25 team is possible "without giving up a TCF game", but it seems far more likely that the best we could do is NDSU in 2020.
 

AO54 said:
If LSU can be convinced to go up to Lambeau without a return game I suppose a top 25 team is possible "without giving up a TCF game", but it seems far more likely that the best we could do is NDSU in 2020.
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Wisconsin played LSU in Houston two years ago.
 

Since we don't get enough Jug games maybe we should schedule Michigan OOC ;)

Not that they'd want to give up a home OOC but still would be fun.
 


I'd keep Wisconsin on campus. They have more fans than we do on the whole. They regularly took over the Dome, even when we had some competitive teams in that building's last decade of Gopher football. The smaller capacity of The Bank has changed the crowd ratio for our home games against the Badgers. The money isn't worth tilting the crowd distribution back the other way.
 

AO54 said:
If LSU can be convinced to go up to Lambeau without a return game I suppose a top 25 team is possible "without giving up a TCF game", but it seems far more likely that the best we could do is NDSU in 2020.
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I take back my previous comment. I'd happily beat NDSU in the sand crawler.
 

NO WAY we should play Wisconsin (or any other league game) off campus. Maybe an attractive non conference opponent (like USC or TCU in recent years) could be played at US Bank stadium as a one off, but that's it.

Count me among the group as being a bit underwhelmed by the "People's Stadium" after being there for the futbol match. Drab, grey concourses that were overcrowded and not nearly wide enough or as open as Target Field's. They have that unfinished, industrial type look that is very trendy now but probably won't be in 10 years. Bathroom's a complete cluster F, as was entering and exiting the stadium. Ugly as sin from the outside (but we knew that already).

Positives were the excellent sight lines from the seats, natural light, and acoustics.
 

Zeppelin Gopher said:
NO WAY we should play Wisconsin (or any other league game) off campus. Maybe an attractive non conference opponent (like USC or TCU in recent years) could be played at US Bank stadium as a one off, but that's it.

Count me among the group as being a bit underwhelmed by the "People's Stadium" after being there for the futbol match. Drab, grey concourses that were overcrowded and not nearly wide enough or as open as Target Field's. They have that unfinished, industrial type look that is very trendy now but probably won't be in 10 years. Bathroom's a complete cluster F, as was entering and exiting the stadium. Ugly as sin from the outside (but we knew that already).

Positives were the excellent sight lines from the seats, natural light, and acoustics.
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Took 20 minutes for me to get out and I stayed until the end and then some. Finally got outside, grabbed a light rail ticket with ease, and then saw the light rail line, er, mob. Walked to Day Block and had a couple, then walked to the West Bank station.

Hate to say it but I think you are right that the inside will look dated in 10 years. TCF stadium rules.
 

Zeppelin Gopher said:
NO WAY we should play Wisconsin (or any other league game) off campus. Maybe an attractive non conference opponent (like USC or TCU in recent years) could be played at US Bank stadium as a one off, but that's it.

Count me among the group as being a bit underwhelmed by the "People's Stadium" after being there for the futbol match. Drab, grey concourses that were overcrowded and not nearly wide enough or as open as Target Field's. They have that unfinished, industrial type look that is very trendy now but probably won't be in 10 years. Bathroom's a complete cluster F, as was entering and exiting the stadium. Ugly as sin from the outside (but we knew that already).

Positives were the excellent sight lines from the seats, natural light, and acoustics.
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Jeez, sounds like they improved very little on the major issues with the Metrodome (concourses and bathrooms chief among them). That's disappointing as hell. But I'm sure the many suites are amazing. And Ziggy got his castle.

Sent from my SM-G920P using Tapatalk
 

MGGopher said:
Jeez, sounds like they improved very little on the major issues with the Metrodome (concourses and bathrooms chief among them). That's disappointing as hell. But I'm sure the many suites are amazing. And Ziggy got his castle.

Sent from my SM-G920P using Tapatalk
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And they took 500 million of our dollars because they couldn't afford it but now they are building a 500 million dollar practice facility. Such a joke.
 


bottlebass said:
And they took 500 million of our dollars because they couldn't afford it but now they are building a 500 million dollar practice facility. Such a joke.
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Who said they couldn't afford it?
 

MGGopher said:
Jeez, sounds like they improved very little on the major issues with the Metrodome (concourses and bathrooms chief among them). That's disappointing as hell. But I'm sure the many suites are amazing. And Ziggy got his castle.

Sent from my SM-G920P using Tapatalk
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The seats themselves are REALLY cheap, thin plastic that will break frequently. I guess they wanted to save a few bucks there, but it will cost them in the long run.

And they really need to work on their logistics. They need line queues because of the way-too-thin concourses. Isn't that place twice the size of the Metrodome? Another thing I saw as a problem was in the stairwell. After the game, heading down to the main level, I was in a stairwell headed down. When you get to the main level, the stairs keep going and there were a lot of people coming up from down there, so all of the people from both directions were converging at that point. There was a single door on one wall and a double door on the other wall, but there was a stand selling jerseys on the other side of the double door which blocked it, so all of those people had to go through a single door. I assume they'll realize how stupid it was to block the double doors and won't set up like that again.
 


2727Gopher said:
The seats themselves are REALLY cheap, thin plastic that will break frequently. I guess they wanted to save a few bucks there, but it will cost them in the long run.

And they really need to work on their logistics. They need line queues because of the way-too-thin concourses. Isn't that place twice the size of the Metrodome? Another thing I saw as a problem was in the stairwell. After the game, heading down to the main level, I was in a stairwell headed down. When you get to the main level, the stairs keep going and there were a lot of people coming up from down there, so all of the people from both directions were converging at that point. There was a single door on one wall and a double door on the other wall, but there was a stand selling jerseys on the other side of the double door which blocked it, so all of those people had to go through a single door. I assume they'll realize how stupid it was to block the double doors and won't set up like that again.
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I have not been there myself but received a very similar account by someone who took the tour. The first observation they made was the same as yours regarding cheap plastic seats. They also said some sections are not accessible by their section entrance. For example, if you want to get to your lower level section 20 seats, you can't get there through section 20 but rather 19 (I'm making up these numbers). I was also told the urinals in the men's bathrooms are manual flush. It sounds like Ziggy spared no expense on the people's portion of the stadium.
 

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