Oklahoma State Fans Offer Improvements to the BPS Experience

As of Wednesday, there are 120 comments on my post from five days ago about how to improve Boone Pickens Stadium.

Some of you had excellent ideas, and I’ll get to those in a second, and some of you said things about how “you need your OSU fan card revoked,” or to “stay the hell home,” or just straight up an “idiot.” For all of the comments, I thank you.

To be clear, Boone Pickens Stadium is an excellent environment. There is a reason Oklahoma State was the only school I applied to, and while academics played a part, the football probably played a bigger one.

Many of your ideas were commendable, reasonable and frankly just good. There were some extreme ones like opening a beer garden in one corner of the stadium and a beer-serving restaurant in another. I loved that. What a way to get people to stay throughout the game. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that’s feasible in the next half decade.

Here are some concepts that are.

First, the video ribbon was brought up Chris Putnam, and I truly enjoy this. Adding in national scores, stats and graphics would be phenomenal.

I think this is mostly reserved for domes and basketball arenas, but, hey, originality is something OSU should continue to strive for. Probably not a realistic addition any time soon, but could be something to chase by the time Jelani Woods graduates.

Second, the video scoreboard is a must at this point. Someone commented that the four screens in the corners of the stadium are smaller than the one at home. I laughed, but that’s a problem. It doesn’t matter where it goes. On top of Gallagher-Iba Arena seems wonky but sure. It could go on the opposite side where J.W. Walsh used to watch the games while he was hurt. Doesn’t matter. It just needs to happen soon.

Third, adding statues is one of the best ideas I read. The fact that OSU had the greatest college football player in human history and doesn’t do any commemoration for it is beyond me.

So this one is long but there is some good stuff here.

I’m not sure how plausible bringing a deejay on is, especially from a business perspective, but having some sort of algorithm to the song selection or something along those lines would spruce things up, which is undoubtedly needed.

And I’ll leave it at that.

OK, so a lot of you have said that no Power Five teams offer students free tickets to home football games, and though I hate to call you out on it, you’re wrong.

TCU does, and it’s magnificent.

Ticket prices are included in the students’ tuition, so all you have to do is scan your student ID, and you’re in. Personally, I don’t think $250 is outrageous for tickets to all OSU events, but I wouldn’t pay $300 if that makes sense.

OSU could definitely take some notes from our friends in Fort Worth here. Then again, maybe fewer students would show up because of the lack of obligation after paying “$0” in the first place.

Promotions at OSU football games are a lot like days when there isn’t construction on The Atherton Hotel on campus. I’m convinced they just don’t exist.

Bobble head night likely wouldn’t work for the same reasons that NCAA Football isn’t a video game anymore, and group sales on tickets is already a thing though I’m not sure how many people are aware of it.

At any rate, there needs to be more interest in the program. The fact that there has been one sellout at BPS since its existence is not good, especially for one of the top programs in the nation.

I suggest OSU history trivia with real giveaways.

This was fun. The track coaches would absolutely never go for something like this, but I appreciate the idea and believe there is something there.

I’m sure there are plenty of fast students out there. Dress him or her up like a track runner or not and let’s see some competition. While we’re at it, let’s do some work with pigs, babies and freshmen too. There are so many ways OSU could make its halftime entertainment and full game experience better, but this is a good place to start.

Thank you for your comments. If you have any more ideas, feel free to add them to this post.