I think it would help quite a bit if they got rid of the OV seats. They cause quite a bit of confusion on the secondary market and they cheapen the price of the gameday experience. They should reduce the cost of the UL corners and endzone to offset some of this. The result would be no OV seats, and people that want a more affordable gameday experience can obtain it. It would also help to uncrowd the LL, and fill up the UL.
I stumbled across this WaPo article from Michael Wilbon in 1997. One of the things he mentions is that no seat has a OV.
JKC Stadium: Sites, Seats to Behold
By Michael Wilbon
Washington Post Columnist
Wednesday, August 20, 1997; Page D01
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Let's start with the good news from yesterday's tour of the new Jack Kent Cooke Stadium: The inside is fabulous. It's hard to imagine that even the pickiest person on Earth could walk in and see fit to change much of anything.
The bad news: The first person to be tossed into one of the temporary jail cells in the bowels of the new stadium if he assaults anybody else will be Michael Westbrook. His punchout of Stephen Davis is the first real downer of what otherwise has been a productive and optimistic preseason. This is supposed to be one of the cornerstones of your franchise? A guy who attacks a teammate in an open practice, infuriating virtually everybody in the organization? The club's patience with Westbrook is running very short, and it should be.
Fortunately for the team, the first half of the day was spent reveling in a media tour of the new stadium, the good feeling from which obviously will be around a lot longer than the bad taste left by Westbrook's assault.
And the high over the stadium's impending completion is understandable, even if getting it ready on time is going to be a 24-hour-a-day job between now and Sept. 14.
The sightlines, from the seats close to the field, to the Bob Uecker seats up top, to the seats deep in the corners of the end zones, are probably the best you'll find in the NFL. The end zone seats are just as close to the field as they were in cozy RFK Stadium and the sideline seats are so right on top of the benches, you'll probably feel like you can reach right down and lift the headset off Norv Turner's ears. More than 95 percent of the seats are in open air (meaning, bring a cap for sun and rain) but there's no such thing as an obstructed view. It's more intimate than Giants Stadium, closer than Arrowhead, and just short of peerless Ericsson Stadium in Charlotte.
The seats themselves are plenty large, big enough that I could flop my 6-foot-3, 230-pound (okay, 240-pound) frame down and sit comfortably without my knees hitting the seats in front of me or my thighs hitting the seat next to me. Anybody shorter than 6 feet and under 200 pounds should feel like he or she is sitting in a love seat, relative to other stadium seats across America.
The audio system, even with only a few speakers functioning yesterday, put forth sound so full and clear it was like listening to a really high-end home system. There's a mammoth video screen not at one end, but both ends of the stadium, and not way up on the roof like at Giants Stadium and Veterans Stadium, but right on the first concourse. And the concourses themselves are wider than the ones in Miami's Joe Robbie Stadium (now Pro Player Park), with tons of room in the corners of the stadium that may be utilized as public areas at a later date. There seems to be a bathroom about 10 steps from every seat on every level and for a change, women should never have to wait in line.
The people who purchased seats on the club level are in stadium heaven. Not all of the chairs are five inches wider than the rest of the chairs in the main seating areas, as advertised, but folks in those 15,000 premium seats get their own parking just steps from the front door, their own brew pub, three of their own restaurants, their own lounge areas and TV monitors equipped with DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket, and arguably the best sightlines in all of pro football, if you like to be just high enough to see the entire field and formations.
The only thing that warrants criticism is the metal window frames that are a total nuisance in the sky suites and (ahhhem, the press box). It's a sensitive situation because Jack Kent Cooke dearly loved luxury boxes with windows that opened so suite holders could soak in the atmosphere and contribute to it. And while you can hear the roar of the crowd if you're sitting in the middle of a $150,000 suite, you can't see the 40-yard line because of some aluminum window frame. That, I think, isn't going to fly with the high rollers. Some Redskins officials already have noted John Cooke's annoyance and expect frameless, albeit unopenable, windows to be installed after this season.
I've been to every NFL stadium in the league multiple times and I can say with absolutely no reservation that the interior of JKC Stadium is right there with those of Ericsson Stadium, Texas Stadium and Giants Stadium as being as good as it's going to get for viewing pleasure and amenities.
But I can't say the same thing about the exterior.
On the outside, the stadium looks like a building that was constructed in 18 months. It's an observation more than a criticism because who can blame a man for wanting to see his dream house finished before he dies?
Still, the result -- with cleanup and unfinished landscaping figuring to enhance everything -- is a stadium that is the football equivalent of Camden Yards on the inside and the unimaginative new Comiskey Park on the outside. You stand in front of JKC Stadium and you see far too many exposed water pipes and the like. I'm no architecture student, but I expected -- perhaps unfairly -- some kind of dramatic facade like the one on Ericsson, and there is none. All you see is white railings that go on and on, and something on the front that looks like the white siding you'd use to build a tool shed.
But hey, wouldn't you live in the Taj Mahal even if it looked like Boston Garden on the outside?
The legitimate concern isn't the exterior, but the traffic flow, the parking, the access to the place. You look at the building, and it's not difficult to imagine all the critical parts to it being finished in time for the opener. But the roads? Maryland state authorities swear the road construction is "on time." My question is, "On time for what?" With only 25 days to showtime, I made three turns leading to dead ends before deciding to follow a dump truck to the stadium.
Driving and parking on game days is going to be trouble, at least for the immediate future. RFK, along with Soldier Field, The Vet, the Metrodome and Arrowhead, have been among the easiest stadiums in the league to access. JKC may well join Texas Stadium, Rich Stadium in Buffalo and Foxboro Stadium in New England as the toughest. Go early. Very early. And be prepared to shuttle from somewhere.
But even if you get stuck in traffic and have to walk too far from the parking lot, your anxiety should be calmed for the rest of Sunday afternoon by a well-designed, well-executed ballfield that appears to be as comfortable and as inviting as any in the NFL.
© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company
