The San Diego State University Aztecs football team hasn’t played on campus since 1966. And there’s nothing left of the old Aztec Bowl but the decaying stone terraces behind Viejas arena that once held the bleacher seats.
Longtime Aztec football fan Tom Ables sits there, on the east side of the old stadium and points to the opposing seats, which now enclose a parking lot.
“Oh it was a great place. It was fun,” Ables said. “And you can see what a great spectator stadium it was because the first seats, you had elevation. You weren’t down on the ground. And you were just a few feet from the sidelines. You were really in the game here.”
It’s not the same in Mission Valley's Qualcomm Stadium, which the Aztecs have shared with the San Diego Chargers for decades.
“The problem with Qualcomm is it’s too big for us. For instance, we’ve been on the road and you go to a place where they have 25,000 or 30,000 (fans). It looks like a pretty good crowd. You get ... 30,000 in the ‘Q,’ and it looks like nobody’s there,” Ables said.
For many San Diego sports fans, the No. 1 question on their minds is whether the Chargers stay or go to Los Angeles. But the Aztecs aren’t going anywhere. If the Chargers abandon San Diego, you might say that’s bad news for SDSU. But you might also say it’s a chance to finally get a right-sized collegiate stadium for the Aztecs.
The days of the collegiate stadium aren’t gone. In fact, some universities have decided that the warmth of an intimate college venue is just the feeling they need to help alumni feel connected and willing to support their alma mater — even if that means building a new facility that costs hundreds of millions of dollars.
One of the best comparisons to San Diego State is the University of Minnesota. For many years, the Gophers football team shared the Metrodome — a downtown Minneapolis domed stadium — with the Minnesota Vikings. Joel Maturi, former athletic director for the University of Minnesota, said that within 10 to 15 years of the two teams sharing the stadium, people began to wonder if moving into the dome had been a mistake.
“Some people believed it wasn’t a good time to move to begin with, and with the lack of success, lack of student attendance, lack of alumni coming back to campus even for homecoming. They’d go to the game maybe, but they’d never set foot on campus. There was a little bit of discussion,” Maturi said.
Those discussions culminated with the opening in 2008 of TCF Bank Stadium, built on campus on what used to be a field of parking lots. Maturi said the change in game-day atmosphere since then has been palpable.
“Fraternity row ... is on University Avenue and leads right to the stadium. We had homecoming a couple of weeks ago and it was great to drive down the street and see the kids having fun, see older alums come back. It’s an energy that Minnesota hasn’t seen for the 25-plus years when we were in the 'Dome.”
Bank Stadium, as it’s commonly called, was built for about $290 million, and it seats up to 50,000 fans. Remember, this is Big-Ten football.
A more modest collegiate stadium is under construction in Fort Collins, Colorado. That's where Colorado State is building a facility with a seating capacity of 40,000 at an estimated cost of $220 million. Like Bank Stadium, the new stadium in Fort Collins will house meeting rooms and classrooms. It will also be the future home of the Colorado State Alumni Association.
Back in San Diego, state Sen. Marty Block said a new stadium in Mission Valley could be part of an expansion of San Diego State. Speaking outside the 70,000-seat Qualcomm, Block said a satellite campus and stadium could be built in place of Qualcomm and its expansive parking lot.
“I think the stadium ultimately gets knocked down," said Block, a San Diego Democrat. "I don’t think anybody wants it for anything, and frankly it’s too big for San Diego State. And San Diego State as the sole tenant couldn’t make a go of it anyway.
“So instead of the stadium, you put in the classrooms and housing and everything else I’ve mentioned. In a part of this huge parking lot you could build a much smaller stadium. Hopefully you’d bring in a major league soccer team. San Diego would be a great market for major league soccer, and it would be a public-private venture.”
Block’s plan is full of unanswered questions. Those include the question of whether Major League Soccer wants a soccer team in San Diego that would share a stadium with SDSU.
Maturi said the University of Minnesota also had designs on the MLS with the idea of sharing the costs of TCF Bank Stadium. But the soccer league recently announced it would build its own stadium for the Twin Cities market in neighboring St. Paul.
Block said SDSU has to leave its College Area campus for a new stadium because it is just too hemmed in.
“For those who’ve been to San Diego State, there is just no footprint that even comes close to being large enough for even a small stadium on the campus,” he said.
Neither MLS nor the San Diego State athletic department would not comment for this story.
So, how do you pay for an Aztecs stadium in San Diego that could cost up to $300 million? Split the expense with an MSL team, if that’s an option. Charge a student fee. Solicit alumni donations, and court sponsorships and naming rights. Those are some of the possibilities.
The University of Minnesota had the advantage of having stakeholders throughout the state, and it brought its fundraising campaign to every Minnesota county.
Maturi shared this wisdom with SDSU sports fans: raising money for a university stadium is easier than asking taxpayers to give money to the billionaires who own teams in the NFL.
“College is unlike the pros. I truly believe the Gophers will be playing (at TCF Bank Stadium) at the turn of the next century,” he said.
