I found an article in the reference section in a wikipedia article, the actual article I read and have used can be found at http://www.ukathletics.com/athletic-dept/commonwealth-stadium.html The article does not have a posted author but I believe it to be credible because it is on the official UK athletics page. The title of the article is fittingly "Commonwealth Stadium".
The article explains the history of the stadium and its improvements over the years since its conception. It was built in 1973 by a firm by the name of Huber, Hunt, and Nichols after the Kentucky Wildcats had played at the old stadium known as McLean Stadium for 48 years. Originally, the stadium featured 57,800 seats and had no protection from the elements. Although the new stadium came with a whopping $12 million dollar bill, the argument could be made that the new stadium gave the Wildcats an extra boost on the field as the Wildcats have a 52.9% win percentage at home.
After playing on the new Commonwealth Stadium field 26 years, it was decided that the Wildcats needed to update Commonwealth. The price for this job would end up being somewhere in the ballpark of $27.6 million. Some of the additions to the stadium included adding a little under 10,000 seats, a new scoreboard, and some more restrooms. Ironically, a construction company based in Ohio helped with job. Since the expansion the Wildcats have enjoyed an average of 56,527 fans attending games and over 12 million total.
This article not only brought up the realization that the University of Kentucky puts astronomical amounts of money into their athletics and gives the athletes every opportunity to succeed. With that, it also raises some questions, how big is the return on investment for the university? WIth all the talk of NCAA should pay athletes, the idea of the University investing so much money into the athletes just to help them can't be the case.
Chris, you do a nice job summarizing the source you used, and I think your question could be fruitful for further research. In your future posts, make sure to reflect on how you could use the source in a documentary. This source would be good for providing background information on Commonwealth Stadium, especially the amount of funding that went into building and renovating it. You could give this kind of information in the beginning of a documentary as historical background, or you could have a specific section of the documentary focusing on finances/funding.
ReplyDelete