The buildings being constructed around the stadium are not a 'shanty attempt to piggy-back off the team that plays in the house that Rockne built", but rather a blatant admission by Jenkins, Savvy-Jack and the BOT that football is no longer important and they might as well get some more use out of that area of the campus.
Integrating the football stadium into the life of the university is an admission that football is no longer important. That's some powerful NDN-logic right there. Oh, and here's the cover story they gave on how the Crossroads plan developed ... to hide the "real reason": Coming to a Crossroads.
campus. The expansion of campus is headed in that direction and they addressed the stadiums presence within that expansion with the current design. I'm pretty sure none of the guys you mentioned came up with any of these ideas.
On TV the stadium looks cold an uninviting. Maybe it's different in person. In any case, hopefully the project will make a positive visual change when completed.
Yes....it is a testament to the push to move away from our legacy of Rockne,Leahy,Holtz and others,toward the modern world of field hockey, lacrosse,soccer....how I hate the modern world...Grantland Rice forever...
And in 2057, some 60-year-old then will say, "Do you remember back in '17 how great the stadium was after the Campus Crossroads project? Now it's far too modern."
"Outlined against a blue-grey October sky....
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is problematic for ND and a lot of other thoroughbreds. The "wasting away" will take a longer time for the elites, but the process is upon us. The engine that drives the game, bodies, is in an irreversible devolution, moreso in some states/programs than others. And it makes me, a product of this wonderful game, sad because of it. ND is visionary. Many schools either don't see this coming, or choose to ignore it. A lot of places will be stuck with useless, cavernous athletic facilities and little to show.
This is not a chicken little syndrome. It is an insidious, ponderous process which will hit the the lower levels first and then start to gnaw at the biggies. But make no mistake, Crossroads is about a lot more than an edifice to the pantheon of football greats. But football is still important because it is in our blood, and many of us pray that ND will catch the wind and sail mighty again.
Then Benny the Kid Paret was killed in the ring on national TV (you can Youtube it). Football is already in trouble at the lower levels because no loving parent wants to see his or her son suffer a brutal injury. It is no accident that our best football players come from desperate lives... as did the boxers in days of yore,
very essence of the game we played and loved. If we continue to take the toughness out of the game it will end the reason for loving the game. Our intelligent people have to come up with something that will enable the game to be played with toughness while adding more safety. Soccer stinks. My only hope is that people realize that the most concussions come from soccer but it is not even because of toughness. It is because they strike the ball with their heads.
But brains, joints, tendons and ligaments are therefore more vulnerable. Football was almost banned once in the past- who's to say it couldn't happen again.