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G V S U FOOTBALL


gvsusean

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I forget who heard it through the grapevine about the Padnos land south of the downtown campus, but man it would be awesome to build a 20-25000 seat football stadium for GVSU right downtown. GVSU already draws 12-15000 on night games, but imagine how many more they could in a new stadium downtown. A lot of people cite their reason for not going as the drive to Allendale. So many more people would regularly go to Grand Valley games downtown and think of the added shot in the arm it could provide for revitalizing the near-west side. And obviously you could use the stadium for much more than just Laker football. That is on my wish list for sure.

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I think that the program needs to start looking at going to Division I... if feasable....that is where the risk and rewards are much greater.

They asked the coach that on the news last night. He said no way. He enjoys winning championships. Div. I would be a tough row to hoe for them.

Nitro

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They asked the coach that on the news last night. He said no way. He enjoys winning championships. Div. I would be a tough row to hoe for them.

Nitro

The other part about going D-1 is that, if I am not mistaken, every GVSU sports team would have to compete in D-1, and not all GVSU teams dominate like the football and volleyball teams do. They would also have to spend a fortune on new stadiums and the like, because D-1 requires football stadiums to hold X (I forget how many) number of people, etc. Besides, I like watching the program win! I would rather see a D2 team kick a$$ every year than to have a D-1 team with a lousy record.

If it gets to the point where no other schools have a shot anymore because GVSU is that good at everything, then they should make the jump, but I don't think we're there yet. Until then, they should keep on rockin' in D-2. :D

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Students who live in Allendale could cite the reverse.

Not with the free bus rides from The Rapid, they couldn't! :D

But you are probably right, moving the stadium off of the main campus might not work too well. What they should've done is built the whole dang school downtown! Sigh...what could've been.... :P

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if they went Division 1 theyd go 1-AA in football, and be D1 in every other sport. I would love to see GVSU move its major base of ops downtown, that would be a BIG draw for the city, and help recruiting Grand Rapids kids into the school if they went downtown, and D-1. They'd probably go to the Gateway conference if they went. (Illinois State, Indiana State, Youngstown state, etc)

SO much talent leaves Grand Rapids for other schools, and its not Western Michigan either. I think part of that reason is because there isnt a big school to draw them in. Guys like Kelley Butler (Union HS prospect, now OT for the Lions), and many Muskegon prospects would have likely come here if they knew GVSU would compete in Division 1. LOTS of GR athletic talent leaves GR for other schools... many out of state (MSU, and UofM arent as big of draws for GR talent either, WMU gets some but even they arent big draws.)

Speaking of sports, its looking inevitable that the Penguins are moving to another city, I hope Devos has his eye open, and snatches them up, and brings them to GR!, imagine watching Sydney Crsoby putting GR on the map! *giddy* We'd have NHL hockey forever (Gretzky is why Edmonton hasn't moved)

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if they went Division 1 theyd go 1-AA in football, and be D1 in every other sport. I would love to see GVSU move its major base of ops downtown, that would be a BIG draw for the city, and help recruiting Grand Rapids kids into the school if they went downtown, and D-1. They'd probably go to the Gateway conference if they went.

(Illinois State, Indiana State, Youngstown state, etc) SO much talent leaves Grand Rapids for other schools, and its not Western Michigan either. I think part of that reason is because there isnt a big school to draw them in. Guys like Kelley Butler (Union HS prospect, now OT for the Lions), and many Muskegon prospects would have likely come here if they knew GVSU would compete in Division 1. LOTS of GR athletic talent leaves GR for other schools... many out of state (MSU, and UofM arent as big of draws for GR talent either, WMU gets some but even they arent big draws.)

Speaking of sports, its looking inevitable that the Penguins are moving to another city, I hope Devos has his eye open, and snatches them up, and brings them to GR!, imagine watching Sydney Crsoby putting GR on the map! *giddy* We'd have NHL hockey forever (Gretzky is why Edmonton hasn't moved)

Oh man, an NHL team in Grand Rapids would be the cat's pajamas!

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Almost 50% of the students are off the main campus. The only people in Allendale are commuters and 5,000 or so lower classmates. Most students move off campus after the first year and either live in GR or in Allendale. Based on current expansion (and the new makup of my West Side neighborhood) a lot of them are moving to the lower West Side and Heritage Hill.

Hell, the Business School has 6,000 and more than 10,000 take classes there. The nursing school another 1,500 and the Eberhard houses around 1,000 on a decent night. The fact is GVSU is a commuter College and the majority of students are not on Campus in Allendale.

The point is, GVSU would score BIG if they were to build downtown. Attendance at weekend games would easily hit 25,000 - 40,000 as GR has really never had anything like this. The whole weekend college football thing is new here to the local area. Granted you can drive to MSU and UM and get it, but GR is more than developed enough to drive GVSU attendance.

Time for GVUS to think big. The reason they are winning DII National Championships is because they are one of the largest DII schools. Most DII schools are half the size of GVSU. Not to mention that if GVSU were to recieve equal funding (currently the lowest by $3,000/student) and were to open their enrollment it would easily have been a 30,000+ student school. They have to turn away 3,000 applicants every year. They need to grow up and accept the fact that they are becoming a major University.

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If 20,000 Rockford High School fans will drive to Detroit to watch them play in the State Championships, then GVSU could fill a 25,000 seat stadium downtown.

I don't know about that Jeff...high school football gets WAAAY more hype than GVSU does around here. I find it kind of ridiculous, actually. I'll bet half of the town doesn't even know that GVSU won the national title on Saturday.

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I don't think a downtown stadium would help attract anyone by itself, and I think that going to D-1 might actually hurt the program. Think about it. If you are a hot-shot high-school football star, would you rather play for a top-notch D-2 school where you will likely be a star, or a D-1 school where you might not even make the team? Do you think former GVSU receiver Dave Kircus would have even made the cut, let alone been a star, if he had gone to Michigan State? Probably not. But he went to GVSU, set all kinds of school and D-2 records, and now he has played in the NFL. With all due respect to him, it is likely that he wouldn't have gotten very far playing for a big-time school because the competition is so fierce.

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I don't think a downtown stadium would help attract anyone by itself, and I think that going to D-1 might actually hurt the program. Think about it. If you are a hot-shot high-school football star, would you rather play for a top-notch D-2 school where you will likely be a star, or a D-1 school where you might not even make the team? Do you think former GVSU receiver Dave Kircus would have even made the cut, let alone been a star, if he had gone to Michigan State? Probably not. But he went to GVSU, set all kinds of school and D-2 records, and now he has played in the NFL. With all due respect to him, it is likely that he wouldn't have gotten very far playing for a big-time school because the competition is so fierce.

It's the old "Do you want to be a big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a big pond?" analogy. I'll take "big fish in small pond" for $1000 Alex :D

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If you are a hot-shot high-school football star, would you rather play for a top-notch D-2 school where you will likely be a star, or a D-1 school where you might not even make the team? Do you think former GVSU receiver Dave Kircus would have even made the cut, let alone been a star, if he had gone to Michigan State? Probably not. But he went to GVSU, set all kinds of school and D-2 records, and now he has played in the NFL. With all due respect to him, it is likely that he wouldn't have gotten very far playing for a big-time school because the competition is so fierce.

While this may be true, you also have more to gain by going to a big school if you can stand out. The best players aren't going to come to GVSU because there still aren't a lot of people getting drafted to the NFL out of here. I don't know the stats but how many top notch NFL players came from D2 schools and what % of players drafted come from schools other than D1? If I'm a hot-shot high school player, I'm going to a school were the competition is tough, where I can stand out, not somewhere that I can just stomp over the competition without working at it.

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I have always thaught that the dump site would be an awsome spot for a football stadium. It would have a sweet view of downtown buildings, be along 196 and the river, and be near the dt gvsu campus. ofcourse it would take a lot and this would probably never happen but it would be cool to see a 30k seat field there if gv would move up to AA ball

on that note I think GVSU needs to prepare to move up to division IAA. Its already larger than most of its competition (not wayne state). GR is probably the largest metro area in the country without a div. I school. I think they will get a lot more exposure if they do move up.

It would start with the need to expand the current facilities and training programs to be up to par or excede some DI schools and start promoting to draw recruits while still at DII, also they could schedule in some DI non conference games now to play some competition. The football program is solid now and would be good to see the jum but they really need to improve the basketball program and get some champoinships and draw larger turnouts.

look at oakland U, its the same age as GVSU with less students and they were in the same conference, then OU moved to DI and dropped football, they made the NCAA tournament last year after about 5 yrs of DI, so I think GV is in a much better position to be sucessful at that level than OU and they made it, so can gvsu.

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I have always thaught that the dump site would be an awsome spot for a football stadium. It would have a sweet view of downtown buildings, be along 196 and the river, and be near the dt gvsu campus. ofcourse it would take a lot and this would probably never happen but it would be cool to see a 30k seat field there if gv would move up to AA ball

Can't build anything like that on the dump site. It's a clay-capped contaminated site. The best we'll probably see there is a park.

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