Boone Pickens Stadium to Increase Seating Room, Decrease Capacity by 3,500

This past October, a buddy of mine and I landed some club-level tickets from a mutual friend and season-ticket holder for a fantastic Homecoming win over West Virginia. It was a blast.

But the 11 a.m. kickoff time left us baking in the sun of an unseasonably warm October morning from our borrowed north-side seats. And it was a bit cramped. Elbow-to-elbow, we did our best to avoid offending the regulars. Had it been more of a “sit-down game”, things could have been worse.

You’ve heard the expression “standing room only.” Well, if you’ve ever been to a Cowboy football game you’ve experienced the meaning of the phrase in the form of the average 12-16 inches of designated seat width. Let’s do an exercise. Put a ruler down on your chair. Sit on it. Yeah. Most of us won’t have much real estate to work with.

But there’s good news.

Oklahoma State has finally decided to act on their longtime intentions to make some changes to what the university’s website calls “the coziest 60,000-seat stadium in America”.

According to Andy Sumrall, OSU’s assistant athletic director of ticket operations, OSU plans to give fans a little more elbow room. Here he is from an article by Mark Cooper of the Tulsa World.

“Some of the biggest issues we have come from someone sitting on my seat or half of my seat,” said Sumrall. “Seats are just too close together.”

The change will take place over the offseason and is scheduled to be complete before the Cowboys’ home opener against Tulsa on September 2. It entails extending that varying, narrow seat width to a uniform 20 inches in most of the 200 and 300 level seats on the south side of the stadium and some on the north side per the Tulsa World.

The biggest difference other than increased personal space and comfort will be a decreased maximum capacity from 60,218, down to 56,790. But there has only been one true sellout — that frigid rout against Baylor in 2013.

Next year’s capacity was exceeded once last season — that homecoming game. But prior to 2016, that number was beaten 15 times in the previous four seasons. Below are are the home ticket sales for the last five seasons.

There will be a few of us left to tailgate or watch from home but overall, it sounds like these changes are for the better.

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012