A few of our conference-mate facilities
RICE
USM
FAU
FIU
MTSU
WKU
ODU
CHARLOTTE
UTSA
UAB (Jerry D. Young -and- Regions Field)
MARSHALL (TBD)
There's probably not much room between the tracks to the last row of berm seating. I assume there's a buffer of space or easement owned by the Railroad that we can't do anything (I bet a protective fence will probably be built keeping fans away from the tracks). If we do plant anything, it will be nothing like what we had before.
Here is a birds-eye of the stadium
Birds-eye (from Dec 2020)
https://kuula.co/post/7jpZ3
We could plant on the other side of the tracks, but the electric lines are in the way.
Looks like canopies are not so popular with CUSA stadiums
Area SEC stadiums.
ARKANSAS
OLE MISS
MISS STATE
LSU
TAMU
Not really fair to compare to Arkansas (and SEC in general) since they have more money than God but I really enjoyed Arkansas' park. I don't go often (except when the Diamond Dawgs are in town) but I particularly like the tailgating area - foreground of the pic above.
More open stadiums with no canopies.
Guys, I would rank yalls new stadium 2nd among CUSA stadiums behind only Rice. The renderings of Marhall's new stadium look nice, but their initial bids were much higher than they expected and they had to scale back/redesign and delay a year (2022) so I'm doubtful it'll turn out as nice as the renderings.
I've seen a lot of complaints in this thread about the number & color of your chairbacks. Honestly, unless you were routinely selling out the old park and tickets were tough to come by, I would think increasing the number chairbacks wouldn't be necessary or fiscally responsible. As far as them not being green: what a stupid thing to bitch about. Look at those 6 pics of those SEC parks, widely considered among the best parks in the country. Only 2 of them have green chair backs. The others have school colors, as does the new park at Oklahoma State which is one of the nicest in the country:
Yall have got a great looking new park. You should be proud and although the tornado was unfortunate, you did luck up with last season being cut so short. Thus you have this brand new park and didn't have to endure a full season playing at Ruston High.
Best of luck this season