Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Story: http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/slideshow?widget=142402

Slideshow of areal shots: http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/slideshow?widget=142402

It's sad to see a stadium crumble like the Parthenon or the Coliseum in Rome. and I guess they'll never tear it down, but the abandoned stadium with the collapsed dome is a sad sign which parallels the fortunes of the city of Detroit. 50 years ago, Detroit had the highest per-capita income of any city in the US, and when I lived in Oakland County it still had the highest per capita income of any county in the US, but those days are long since gone. When the Lions left Pontiac to move downtown it was still a nice stadium but I guess it didn't have enough luxury boxes and a 100 foot jumbotron and PSL's. I worked in Pontiac in the mid 90's and had to pay a city tax to pay on the stadium; I think it was a 30-year bond, which meant people were still paying for the stadium even after the Lions left. It's too bad, I think the Silverdome still had a couple more decades of use left in her.

The car companies and suppliers still use the stadium parking lot to do vehicle and technology demonstrations. Plenty of room to set up courses and test tracks with traffic cones and such so potential customers and automotive press can try out new models and features in ride and drives. There are a couple of outbuildings that they use as staging areas for the press (as well as indoor facilities for youth soccer), and they are carpeted with pieces of old Astro turf from the stadium. Was covering one such event for a client and stood on the turf from one of the end zones that probably also had been touched by the spikes of Billy Sims, Barry Sanders, etc. after they scored touchdowns.

Immediately after the PFRA Convention in Cleveland last summer, I drove three hours west to see the stadium and pick up a stadium seat. It was depressing. A grey day with rain, and a great stadium that is no longer in use. I wish that there was some way we could preserve these old stadiums.

Something I remember that it was said that the Silverdome was very far (checking, it's 28 miles from Ford Field) and had poor public transportation to it. It's sad to see it in decay, however, and I remember very well Super Bowl XVI, their NFL Films highlights are one of my favorites, the Silverdome look cavenous and not well lighted, but that had something very cool to it.

But they just held Wrestlemania there back in April, according to Hulk Hogan.

Teo wrote:Something I remember that it was said that the Silverdome was very far (checking, it's 28 miles from Ford Field) and had poor public transportation to it. It's sad to see it in decay, however, and I remember very well Super Bowl XVI, their NFL Films highlights are one of my favorites, the Silverdome look cavenous and not well lighted, but that had something very cool to it.

The Silverdome was far from downtown Detroit, and I remember going to Lions games that we would get into downtown Pontiac and police officers would steer us to parking garages, where we would have to park and take buses the final 2-3 miles to get dropped off at the Silverdome. After the game we would have to wait at the same place to get picked up by the same bus and taken back to the parking garage.

It is easy for those of us who grew up in the late 70s and 80s to be nostalgic for stadiums such as the Silverdome. While not a particularly attractive stadium compared to today, it represents a time and place where the games and surrounding atmosphere were much simpler. It doesn't get much more Spartan than Sullivan Stadium, Fulton-County Stadium, Metropolitan Stadium, Shea Stadium or my own beloved Tampa Stadium. There was very little to do at the stadiums but watch the games....but I can still picture in my mind's eye all the stadiums of that era and there are times when I would trade all the jumbotrons, seat back computer screens and concierge concessions for another fall Sunday at the Old Sombrero or watching a televised game between the Raiders and Broncos at the original Mile High Stadium.

Denis Crawford » Thu Jan 29, 2015 10:03 pm
"... Sullivan Stadium, Fulton-County Stadium, Metropolitan Stadium, Shea Stadium or my own beloved
Tampa Stadium... Old Sombrero... original Mile High Stadium."

Fun... but all modern edifices those...
I never saw the Lions in Detroit but I did see the Yankees beat the Tigers at Briggs; and, just to rub it in a little,
saw many a New York Football Giants' games at the Polo Grounds and saw the Boston Patriots at Fenway.
A cute tale... I have two old grammar school classmates (actually, we are all old) who went on the hook as high school juniors for the first (and maybe) only time in their lives.
Why? It was a "subway series" and the Yankees were playing the Dodgers. It was October 8, 1956 and they each had
less than a buck extra.
So, they bought soda and a hot dog and not a program which was only 10 cents.
Too bad... that was Don Larsen's Perfect Game.
Well, it must be something about good little Catholic school boys because I have no Briggs, Polo Grounds, or Fenway programs either and, on every occasion, I was lucky enough to have the price of a program in my pocket.

By the way, Boston College and Notre Dame will play football at Fenway in 2015. It shows how irrelevant the live gate is now-a-days. They could probably sell at least five times the 37,000+ capacity of the last real ballpark in America.
Whoops! Make that the world.
How many ballparks have been replicated TWICE? (Fort Myers, Florida and Greenville, South Carolina)

Further humiliation in the sad demise of the Silverdome ...

https://www.freep.com/story/sports/nfl/ ... 917277001/

"A flag on the play here ..."

(video at https://www.freep.com/videos/news/local ... 108275954/)