While perusing the news this morning, I found this quick missive from Austin Meek's blog at the TCJ. Apparently, there's a possibility that K-State and Iowa State may move their football games to Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City.
My initial reaction was something along the lines of "[t]hat would be fucking stupid." But I sat around and thought about it a little bit, and while I'm still not sold that this is a good idea, there may be some reasons to support it.
First, I thought it was stupid because I don't see any reason to have a special setup for the K-State/ISU game. The Clones are not a rival program. There's no 'history' between the two schools. Not since 2002, when Seneca Wallace got depantsed by the K-State defense, have I looked at the game with ISU with anything resembling great anticipation. I could look at a special setup with Colorado (K-State games at Arrowhead, CU games at Invesco High field or whatever they call it these days), as something worth looking at, but Iowa State? Uhh, OK.
On top of that, I'm assuming this means K-State will be giving up a home conference game in the near future. I know that Arrowhead has (a lot) more seats than Bill's House, but there's no guarantee we'll sell as many tickets in Arrowhead as we would at a home game. In fact, there's at least a decent chance won't make as much money on this, unless the Kansas City Chiefs are guaranteeing us some minimum payout. And all that says nothing of the Manhattan businesses who are certain to be monumentally pissed off about losing a weekend of Wildcat football.
So those are the negatives, in my eyes. But when I thought about it, this may not be such a bad move after all. With the caveat mentioned above, this could be a good financial move. Arrowhead provides a lot more seats, and I'm guessing we're looking at a payout for the year the game is a "home game" for Iowa State, which would be a bonus.
Also, though maybe not especially vocally on here, I've been a bit critical of K-State's presence in the Kansas City metro area. Put simply, I don't believe we've been sufficiently marketing ourselves in the City of Fountains, and the KC Star certainly isn't picking up the slack. On top of that, the two schools that dominate KC in terms of total alums have significantly improved in football while we've taken a significant step back. We need to make sure we don't completely lose our presence in KC to those two schools. Playing a game at Arrowhead could be a very good method of increasing our visibility in KC.
Finally, when I thought about the "nothing special" nature of our series with Iowa State, I realized that was in some ways a flawed argument. While KU and MU have a long, bloody rivalry, their football rivalry didn't register a blip on the national radar until this year. Last season excepted, it's been 13 years since KU had any national relevance, and it's been 29 years since MU had any national relevance. (On a side note, it sure is fun to watch the two schools fight about who has more, or more accurately, less football tradition) So while the K-State/ISU series has never had anything resembling national implications, neither did the Border War prior to last season. And though KC may not be a natural second home for Iowa State or, to a lesser extent, K-State, we damn sure aren't going to move our series to Des Moines just for the sake of having a special neutral-site game. Does Drake even play football?
Anyway, those are my initial and semi-revised thoughts on the issue. Yours?