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NYT - $63 million, 12k seat high school football stadium approved in McKinney, Texas

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Our city's main event center is a 5,100-seat enclosed arena and hosts minor league hockey, basketball and arena football teams and only cost $36m in 2006.

We have a larger population than McKinney.
 

jstripes

Banned
How about Varsity Blues?

Ya, that movie kinda blew me away.

I mean, my high school here in Canada had an athletic department that won plenty of championships, including football, but no one was staking their future on it and the surrounding community had practically zero interest in games.
 
Born and raised in the town Friday Night Lights happened in, and I am not surprised. High School Football is more than life here.

I thought I read something similar to this a year or so ago about a town spending millions on a high school football stadium. Must be becoming more common.

The only thing that bothers me is that it should be privately funded, not public.
 
Then you must not know any young people outside of the city. High school football is what people do on Friday, and even Saturday if you go to school within the city of Atlanta.
it's crazy errywhere

i drive from SWGA to ATL ... often enough... occasionally on a Friday or Saturday Evening and when you drive thru a town on the way up the difference is night and dsy between it being a not-very-busy town and seeing thousands of cars at the high school.
 
I prefer a good old fashioned monorail myself but wow all that for high school sports.... Seems a bit much

Here's to hoping it pays off though
 
Wow. That's expensive. That seats half my town and costs 4x the budget of where I live.


It's hard to imagine how high school football is that popular considering my school never had a big crowd. Then again, I don't live in Texas so I wouldn't know.
 
I hate the new Vikings stadium due to open here in Minneapolis. If there was ever a referendum on public financing it would've failed whether it resulted in the Vikings leavings or not. The Vikings and football in general is hardly a cultural zeitgeist here.

That said, I'm really ok with Texas stadiums like this. The public approved it. It's for a public institution that benefits kids and lends itself to a true sense of community. Do I come close to comprehending such an obsession? No. But it kinda looks like fun to have something the whole freakin town is obsessed with every Friday for generations.
 

thebeeks

Banned
I'm shocked so many people in this thread are shocked.

C'mon y'all, did you think Southern Bastards was just making this kind of obsession with high school football up?


Also, booo McKinney, go FMHS.
 

braves01

Banned
I hate the new Vikings stadium due to open here in Minneapolis. If there was ever a referendum on public financing it would've failed whether it resulted in the Vikings leavings or not. The Vikings and football in general is hardly a cultural zeitgeist here.

That said, I'm really ok with Texas stadiums like this. The public approved it. It's for a public institution that benefits kids and lends itself to a true sense of community. Do I come close to comprehending such an obsession? No. But it kinda looks like fun to have something the whole freakin town is obsessed with every Friday for generations.

That stadium looks cool and it will be worth when the Vikes win the super bowl this year. Minneapolis residents might not've been too hot on paying what they did, but I think the rest of the state is more into the Vikings than you think they are, and is okay with the state's share of the cost.
 
“Down south, football is a really big deal, and playoff football is a really big deal,” said Jennifer Gray, the chairwoman of Vote for McKinney’s Future, a pro-stadium group.

Well that settles it, $63 Million for a high school football stadium it is!
 

Iorv3th

Member
The idiocy of them saying this will bring in 'tournaments'. You don't have football tournaments that get played out in a weekend. For playoff games a lot of them get held at other venues like Cowboys stadium, cotton bowl, etc. It's not like there is a shortage of football fields.

Damn stadium was built so hastily that they had to close it down and call in an independent company to reseal the concrete supports.


Because most school districts are very very incompetent. They waste so many tax dollars and then just have another bond when they need more. Cut teachers salaries, cut teachers and spend more on sports. It pisses me off.

The highschool in my town had to tear down one building to build a new weight room. When it was built they decided it was too small and tore it down and built another bigger building before it was even used. They wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars building and tearing down a building to build another building.

They then decided that it wasn't big enough and built another sport complex in another location with it's own weight room attached. They 'planned' to turn the other building into the concession stand even though it wasn't in a position to even be close to convenient. They never ended up doing that. Now I think it's just used to store stuff.

This was all in the span of like 2-3 years.

Luckily the people on that school board got voted off. But hey when they say "we didn't get the tax income we expected this year so we are going to have to fire a few teachers and others will have to take a pay cut" it's just because they are trying to save money.

I live 15 minutes from where this will go up :) Our town (Frisco) has a giant HS football stadium also, its amazing, and soon we will have the largest practice field in the world (the new Cowboys practice area) which is only about 20 minutes from the stadium this article is talking about! The insane growth in Dallas is truely spectacular (and its making our property value skyrocket)

Frisco is no longer a town, it's a full blown city. I will probably be down there indoor rock climbing this weekend.
 

Pagusas

Elden Member
I live 15 minutes from where this will go up :) Our town (Frisco) has a giant HS football stadium also, its amazing, and soon we will have the largest practice field in the world (the new Cowboys practice area) which is only about 20 minutes from the stadium this article is talking about! The insane growth in Dallas is truely spectacular (and its making our property value skyrocket)
 

C4Lukins

Junior Member
HS football in Texas is a huge deal, it is scary sometimes. That movie Varsity Blues is a fairly accurate portrayal of how obsessed people are with it in small towns.


It is not really a small town though. It is really just a suburb of North North Dallas. Lots of money there and nearby unlike the stereotype Texas small town football programs that are romanticized on film.
 
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