OSU has built it, will fans come?

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September 3, 2008

By Jeff Mullin, Commentary The Enid News and Eagle Wed Sep 03, 2008, 11:25 PM CDT

For Oklahoma State’s football team, this Saturday’s home opener against Houston will be like nothing seen in Stillwater for many years.

Oklahoma A&M; opened its athletic field in 1913. A year later, it was renamed Lewis Field, in honor of Lowery Laymon Lewis, a former dean of veterinary medicine and of science and literature.

Save for a few improvements and additions, old Lewis Field stayed virtually the same for decades, devolving into the rickety facility dubbed Rustoleum Stadium.

But that was before T. Boone Pickens came along. Thanks in large measure to the generosity of the OSU alumni and oil billionaire, Lewis Field has been rebuilt into a state-of-the-art football palace.

Thus for the first time in nearly a century, Oklahoma State will be debuting a new football stadium.

The project is not quite complete, with work on the new football operations center to continue until 2009. There will be new football offices, meeting rooms, a speed and conditioning center, locker rooms, equipment room, athletic medicine center, media facilities, hall of fame area and training table.

But that is next year. This year the bowl on the stadium’s west end is completed, and the seating capacity has been raised to 60,000.

So how many of those seats will be filled? That is the challenge for Oklahoma State’s football fans. Boone’s bucks have built it, now will you come?

OSU athletic director Mike Holder tried something different this season, deciding not to sell single-game tickets to the Nov. 29 Bedlam game with arch-rival Oklahoma, hoping to drive up season ticket sales.

As of a couple of weeks ago, OSU had sold 3,000 more season tickets than the 33,400 sold last season. Last season’s average attendance for six home games was 40,024.

During last Saturday’s season opener against Washington State in Seattle, the 50,830 fans in 67,000-seat Qwest Field made plenty of noise that created problems for the Cowboys at times.

If Boone Pickens Stadium is going to become the nightmare for visiting teams that Gallagher-Iba Arena can be for opposing basketball teams, Cowboy fans need to buy tickets and show up in droves.

Mullin is the News & Eagle’s senior writer

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