Sorry, peeps, but Kirby Smart ain’t talkin’ fan friendly here, except in an oblique sense.
I think in every sport you want to try and improve on your facilities and you want to make sure you’re getting the best you can out of your facilities because it helps you recruit,” Smart said. “So in that regard I think everybody wants to improve but also it improves the experience of the fans and different things like that.”
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe all by itself winning will make those Sanford Stadium bathrooms less skanky.
Get The Picture 
That smell will become so associated with winning that every time you go into a middle-of-July-3-day-old Porta John, you’ll get goosebumps from that overwhelming good feeling. Those are going to be the days!
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I think you nailed it Senator. Start winning and stop crapping the bed and, suddenly, the restrooms and food in the stadium is perfectly acceptable.
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I sure hope so. And throw in the traffic and piped-in music drowning out the marching bands, and we’re in business.
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Traffic is part of what you have to deal with at any large event. It’s hard for any city to smoothly move 50,000 additional cars to and from the same part of town within a roughly 12 hour period. If you want to experience a major cluster with traffic management, go to a game at Clemson. I know people that have missed the first half due to sitting in traffic and have taken 9 hours to get home in what should have been a 2 1/2 hour trip.
The person who came up with the piped in music should be publicly executed at the first home game’s halftime show.
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Piped in music innovator’s lives matter.
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The Vols did an excellent job of piping their band’s music throughout that decrepit stadium. Why cant we?
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Because if you sit in the first ten rows or so in front of those speakers, your ears will be bleeding before the end of the first quarter…
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I think your sarcasm meter is broken.
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I don’t, I honestly believe winning will stop almost all the bitching and moaning about the stadium. If people truly placed the “customer experience” at the top of their reasons for watching a Georgia game, or any sporting event for that matter, they would watch at home on tv or at a nice bar. If I’m at home or a bar or a friend’s house or a private venue watching on tv, I can get what I want to eat and drink and not have to choose from a very limited menu of mediocre at best options, have more than adequate access to nice restrooms, not deal with traffic and save loads of money. I go to the games to watch the game, hopefully a win. Going to the restroom and buying food and drink in the stadium are two far distant secondary issues to me.
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Or is it the opposite? I hear so many people at the games bitching and moaning about the team that they don’t have time to concern themselves with niceties like restrooms and hot dogs.
If people don’t have Bobo to Blame or “Run the Damn Ball” or what not, then they’ll turn their attention towards the things that don’t matter at all.
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I mean it’s a stadium. It’s not a 5-star hotel.
I plan on going to Sanford this year for the first time in my life. I doubt its restrooms will be any worse than many of the port-a-johns I used in my 10+ years working construction.
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How much did you have to pay to work construction?
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Lol. I never get bothered by port a johns when I’m wearing head, eye, foot protection.
If the restrooms are truly that bad, call osha and the EPA.
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Why is the idea that wanting a decent customer experience when we pay a ridiculous sum of money to bring our families to these games a bad thought? You guys never cease to amaze. Tell me any other public event (sporting, movies, theme parks, etc.) where you would just say “waylp – as long as they’re successful I can handle waiting half the event to take a piss or buy a Coke. That money I spent to get here truly meant I expected nothing in return. I really should just be grateful they let me in the door.”
I’m sorry – do you truly believe that McGarity and the asshats in B-M see us as anything more than a bunch of interchangeable, walking wallets? If they see me as just another asshole customer that they need to shake all the money out of my wallet as they can, then why should I not expect to receive a first-class customer experience? It seems like only one side is treating this exchange as such and we’re the suckers on the shit-end of the stick.
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You can always vote with your wallet.
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Correct, obviously not very many do.
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They keep packing in Sanford, and the cost to expand the concourses/restroom areas would cost many millions, thus they are in no hurry to improve this glaring area that fans continue to complain about. As for your last point, I personally said enough is enough and gave up my season tickets quite a few years ago, and now only attend 1 game yearly. Frankly, I don’t miss my seats/going to more games whatsoever — watching at home on TV with all the trappings of comfort/entertainment more than makes up for it.
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Wait a second Senator…..so you, most other reasonable fans, and everyone who ever occupied the fire CMR train has bitched and complained about UGA’s facilities for years and years. Kirby makes a bland statement about better facilities increasing the fans’ experience and your post is this snarky BS?!?! I don’t get it….do you only follow UGA football so you can complain it about it incessantly?
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Damn it, you’ve found me out. That’s the only reason I blog.
Seriously, I don’t have a problem in the world with Georgia upgrading its facilities, other than the usual caveat about the overall silliness of the CFB facilities arms race.
But would it really kill B-M to pay some serious attention to making game day a more pleasant experience? Adams is long gone, plenty of money is rolling it (with more to come), yet our needs remain little more than an afterthought.
Tell me something – how much are you spending on your season tickets right now? Do you really feel like you’re getting your money’s worth? Would winning an SEC championship make you feel better about that?
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Well Senator, he has a point. Dumping on our bathroom facilities is beneath you. You should just be willing to stand in a long line yearning to flush your dollars away and enjoy to sweet old spicy smell of victory when Kirby brings us an SEC Championship.
Have a mint…they’re free.
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An Ode to ADGM
Gimme three steps to that smell.
You know that urine smell, the whole room.
Smelled like [sniffing, pondering] victory.
Someday somebody’s gonna to have to clean this latrine.
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We’ve heard/seen how fancy the facilities for football players at Bama is. How are the bathrooms at Bryant-Denny? Does the other half live nicer all around, or do they have crappy stalls to crap in too?
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Wish one time Howdy Doody GM had to use facilities that we do. Just way behind the curve and donation and ticket prices rising.
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If it makes you feel any better, our “luxury boxes” are not nearly as palatial as some other stadiums.
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TAMU has to be near the lead there. They’re basically luxury apartments with balconies overlooking the game.
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Its been stated countless times by various TPTB types that expanding the concourses at Sanford would cost tens of millions, as you’d have to expand outward which would mean all sorts of structural issues alone. With that said, I recently visited beautiful Dodger stadium, which was recently renovated including widening the concourses, which previously were like Sanford, but now have the feel of a modern stadium with plenty of room to roam. The wider concourses also allowed them to greatly increase the size of the restrooms too.
To solve the issue, however, they simply removed several rows of seats at the top of the given section, thus giving them wider concourses without going the much more expensive route of expanding outward. This seems like something that could also be done at Sanford relatively cheaply…but of course this would mean less capacity and thus, less revenue.
Not sure if they are aware of or have studied this — I’m guessing they have.
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If they did, they probably stopped studying when they got to the $150,000,000.00 part –
“$150 million worth of renovations to the 52-year-old ballpark, starting with the rundown bathrooms and focusing largely on plazas for fans to circulate pre- and mid-game.”
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/stadium-609363-smith-dodger.html
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Recently was my 2rd visit to Dodger stadium since the renovations (lifelong Dodger fan so I’ve been to Dodger stadium quite a few times since the late 90’s), and I can attest that most of that 150 mil went to the vast plazas outside of the stadium. Whereas before it was simply a parking lot that led right to the gates, now there’s all sorts of outside areas to take advantage of, including playgrounds, new restaurants, scoreboards, etc.
Also, remember that L.A. is far more expensive than Athens — a, say, 30 mil project there would cost far less here.
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The only blessing about the toilet facilities at Sanford is one does not have to pay a few Euros and still get a deplorable situation like in most of Italy and France.
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“The squeaky wheel gets the grease”. When enough people write to the pres and AD about the problem, it will be addressed. If they get petitions, they won’t like the potential bad publicity and will address the problem.
Maybe they could get sponsored facilities.
If they’re going to sell beer, they should have the contracted distributor agree to add/improve bathrooms. It should be part of the deal…even if it means adding a nickle to the cost of a brew.
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I’m not sure the advertising rights for exposure six times a year for, at most, 4 hours is going to entice too many sponsors to shell out millions of dollars for stadium renovations. Fans need to accept the reality that college football is a 6 event schedule with maybe 500,000 fans attending. It is not major league baseball with 81 games and several million fans a year attending.
BM may spend millions on new locker rooms and a recruit lounge but they know the fans will keep sending in the checks and filling the stadium up regardless of the restroom or concession experience. A championship season (of any kind) will quiet all the dissent about the facilities and the fans will gladly pay. BM knows this, heck, they know the checks will keep coming in even if there is no championship.
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Someone needs to tell Kirby that recruits’ parents use the restrooms, too.
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Well, for now. I imagine once they redo the locker room they’ll include a recruits only area where the families get nicer crappers.
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That’s a very good point
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This whole thread stinks.
Who gives a crap if we win championships?
Piss on the reserve fund.
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/golf clap
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Why is anyone asking the head coach about bathrooms in the stadium? Why was anyone asking the head coach about a rapper’s rider? MOST IMPORTANTLY, why did the head coach feel the need to answer with something other than, “that’s not my responsibility, I don’t know, go ask my boss who is responsible for those sorts of things”?
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[Snort, Harrumph] Y’all are a bunch of sissy whippersnappers. I knew when Dooley put lights on the field it was a slippery slope to sky boxes, a 600 level, and concession stands that sold more than Coke, Poss’ BBQ, peanuts and popcorn. Y’all have had it too good. Real men can pee anywhere. Why, in my day……
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Yeah, but when you get old, your penis atrophies and you are reluctant to pee anywhere you dare like in your youth. Course, I’m just proud that I continue to pee thru mine since that’s the only thrill some of us old farts get. And the new accompanying gas sounds are hilarious in a crowded public bathroom. And having the “walking farts” while climbing the steps makes for banal band accompanying music hilarity. Might as well laugh at it, there’s nothing else we can do about it.
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Bathrooms are not what I object too, it is the Quarter of football I miss standing in line that is really outrageous. Glad Georgia does not a gender bathroom law, they would need a patty wagon to haul off the criminals.
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