Well, originally Faurot Field was proposed to have seating as high as 98,000+ according to Wikipedia, in a series of staged expansions.  It's part of a logical progression for our program to further expand the seating due to increased attendance, better performance, as well as the possible move to other conferences.  It's no coincidence that the two power conferences that most Tiger fans want to end up in - the Big 10 or SEC - have huge stadiums.  Not that it's ever going to happen based on this post, but after looking at the stadium, I came up with an unusual proposal to address expanding the seating without "truly" altering the nature of the stadium.

Any discussion of the stadium and any possible changes have to take into account the shallow water table on the south end of the field and the associated problems.  Apparently this prevents or makes enclosing the south end in a traditional structure very, very expensive.  My plan is to swap the ends of the stadium in a sense - remove the south stands (keeping the tunnel & locker rooms), but expand the east and west stands on both ends by kinking them inwards.  Then berm the south end over the tunnel and locker rooms, and move the Rock M to the south end.  That way you're not putting a structure into the water table and you retain "most of" the general admission seating... just on the other end of the stadium - where you couldn't truly expand seating anyway.

You would mirror the inward kinking of the stands on the north end, but this time you can truly and fully enclose the north end of the stands, by moving the stands much closer to the goalposts and "flattening the arc" that we currently see in the design.  You might have to move the ROTC howitzer to the south end as well, but the key factor is that you can make these stands congruent with the east and west stands in terms of size, seating, etc; without any water table issues.  This would significantly increase the seating of Faurot Field while maintaining the traditional elements (the Rock M, the ROTC howitzer, etc) that are a part of gameday in Columbia.  Now, about raising all the cash to make this happen - well, that's not up to me.

In summation, we aren't truly going to change our stadium, we're just going to swap ends in order to use the north end to increase the seating structure.  We'll still have the GA seating and the Rock M, just at the south end of the stadium where the high water table prevents structural improvements.  And look, it didn't cost the university anything for me to give them this idea, free!  Now someone email this to Mike Alden....