Oliver Luck partying into the future
July 16, 2012 by Mike Casazza
WVU’s director of athletics spoke Thursday in Bridgeport at the Benedum Fellows banquet and, as he is prone to do, gave the audience something they might not have heard before.
This time the topic was renovations at Milan Puskar Stadium.
Hey, haven’t we touched on this recently? Of course, and with the vinyl stadium banners. Yet there goes Luck again, sprinkling in something new for the eager ears before him.
The north side of the stadium, where most enter from the parking lot of Ruby Memorial, could see the starkest change in the next decade, Luck said. The concept being looked at could create “a party deck” for the WVU fan base.
“What we’re looking at would almost create a party deck. Right now you walk in and kind of walk up to Touchdown Terrace,” Luck said. “We’re thinking of kind of taking a deck and putting it out, which would create some space underneath. We don’t have any kitchen space to cook and aid the concessionaires. Also, those trucks that are used for the broadcasts, we’d like to get those underground so to speak because we need to create some additional space.”
Party deck! I swear, Bob Roberts just fainted.
Also, how did this escape me until Sunday night? It’s exactly the sort of thing many people would be irrationally outraged about around here. Tradition! Alcohol! Revenue! Blasphemy!
Instead, it’s mostly crickets. What would have been emailed and tweeted to me again and again, say, a year ago instead found its way to me when a graduate overseas emailed me to ask what the deal was. Imagine my surprise.
I mean, if that’s not a sign of people getting neck-deep in the waters of change after easing in the past two years, I’m not sure what is.
Then again, these things are becoming a little more prevalent now. Everyone who goes to Raymond James Stadium seems to come away in awe of its party deck. The Washington Redskins are installing one in the upper deck area … and WVU will be at FedEx Field in September.
Baseball stadiums do it. You saw one at the MLB all-star game and you’ve seen them all over minor-league stadiums. It’s huge in the MLS and the stadium Luck helpd build in Houston has two of them, aptly named Heineken Terrace and the Budweiser Deck.
College football seems like a logical link and that’s certainly feasible at WVU now that it can sell beer and follow what others are beginning to do around the country.