Future
On April 20, 2011, the school officially accepted an invitation to become a football-only member of the Division I FBS Mid-American Conference. Consequently, the 2011 season was the last at McGuirk Stadium before a major renovation project to upgrade it to FBS standards. For the 2012 and 2013 seasons the Minutemen will play all of their home games at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Stadium seating is to be increased to about 25,000 seats with more seats being added to the sidelines as well as seating additions to the south end of the stadium. The north end will have a new training facility and locker rooms added, and the press box will be elevated to two levels with more TV/radio booths as well as luxury suites being added. The stadium was not suitable for FBS football in its previous configuration. It would have been prohibitively difficult to meet the minimum FBS attendance of least 15,000 fans per game, and its press box and replay facilities were well below MAC standards.
The cost of this construction is estimated at $20,000,000 and is expected to be completed in time for the 2014 season. The deal with Gillette Stadium calls for UMass to play at least 4 games per year at the stadium from 2014 through 2016 which would leave open the possibility for one or two games per season during those years to be played on campus at McGuirk Stadium. One of the main reasons for the possibility of games during that period at McGuirk is that the current Mid American Conference TV contract with ESPN typically schedules a handful of MAC games to be played on Tuesday nights in October and November. If UMass were scheduled a home matchup for one of the weeknight games, the game could be played on campus thus negating the need to bus students approximately 100 miles to and from Gillette Stadium late at night on a school night.
On September 14, 2012 the UMass trustees approved a five-year, $3.1 billion capital plan. Included in the plan was 30 million dollars to be spent renovating the stadium as part of the transition to FBS football play. Although construction on the renovations began in March, 2013, an official groundbreaking ceremony was held on April 26, 2013.
Read more about this topic: Warren Mc Guirk Alumni Stadium
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