http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/104741
My thought is that Austin and Texas are probably big enought that a Texas home game on Saturday shouldn't be much conflict with F1 weekend and race on Sunday, but I suppose the hotels and restaurants have a different opinion.
UT footballs fills up the entire place, especially Texas/OSU. The stadium seats as many as the track.
Looking at the calendar, without totally switching the race with another and causing travel chaos for the teams, its tough to see how they can change it. The races are so tightly spaced, common-sense says they could switch to be alongside Canada, but it throws the European season too close (within 7 days) for the start, maybe they would have to think about swapping Canada till later, moving something else backwards that might tie in with that part of the year, then manipulating Austin around Canada and Brazil, at least they are in the same part of the world, if different hemispheres!
Big Tex has already said as much. I have no idea, but he seems confident it wouldn't be an issue, and he's there. It *may* be possible to push it back a week but it's then back-to-back with Brazil, which would be awfully tight. Cheers, Ian
Yeah right! Texas football is not just a game and the crowd is insane! Also, the airport is incredibly small, it'll be hell if they both had the same event. I made the mistake of traveling during SXSW (music festival) and I had to wait an hour in line for security when it takes <1 minute.
Oh boy: If they leave it as is there will be 200,000 folks in town making it miserable for everybody. If they change the date 100,000 folks are out of hotel reservations. Screwed either way.
+1 May have noted this before; I moved to the Bay Area just ahead of the World Cup in '94. Learnt that group matches thru the quarter finals were gonna be played at Stanford. "Stanford!? - It's a friggin' college!" "Ahh, but it seats 100,000!" I had no idea what college football here was all about! One of my boys played "top level" college soccer in the UK - If they were lucky there'd be a few hungover buddies and a dedicated G/F or two in attendance..... I've seen many little league parks with bigger stands!...... Cheers, Ian
Well, crunching some raw numbers......60% of the 100K at a UT game are Home fans, so 40% travel, most by plane by many on Charter Busses, from Oklahoma... Add 120K F1 Fans, and what,maybe 60% local and 40% from other places? And of course lost in the "public' numbers are the travelling staff of the teams... So, sure....Austin's little airport may be busy at the front counter, but the Private Jets don't clear those counters. But I simply based y observation on my personal experience, the places I was urging FChatters to meet me were pretty much average in the gate, or even 'down' by the draw of the special events, so I think there's room for both or expansion on a huge scale for the F1 race. The hotels will have to sort it for themselves, they were hogs blocking up rooms and in the end, sending pleas to folks like me for the 6K/night suites, still 5 night minimum! Those are the folks that have lost the plot....I hope everyone that stayed in locales like Gruene and at barnyard's place on the Colorado in Bastrop saw the real Texas! Let's do it again. UT is kids and families, and while there is some overlap, the small children I saw at the F1 event tired rapidly, lacked proper protection in sunscreen and hearing, and IMO might well be 'left at the sitter', truthfully.....
Yup; I brought this up a few weeks ago. http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=390197&highlight=Austin+date+conflict The only thing they can do - and I believ they will do - is flip with Brazil, and make it the season ending race (at least for 2013) I'm not telling you what to do; but personally I have hotel reservations for that weekend as well. Kevin
Why can't they be on the same weekend They have the football here in Melb on the same weekend as the race and those stadiums easily fit 100k too. If anything it helps both sports as people travelling to watch the game might go watch the race the next day and I know if I was visiting the states I'd want to go visit random American sports which I don't care for any other time
I suspect that Bernie has deep respect for the numbers. Says a lot about the state of F1 in America. Looks like we're not there quite yet.
I actually think UT is probably worried about this -- at least they should be. The team has been horrible the past couple of years, and next year is probably the last for Mack Brown... and we still have no QB. The typical "sellout" games this season looked like about 10% empty seats in the stadium. If there was an F1 race to draw local fans at the same time, or hotels were high enough that people decided not to visit to see the game, I'd guess the stadium could be 30% or so empty on that Saturday... which would be very, very embarrassing for UT.
austin is a small town, I can see why this would be a problem, especially with the busses and downtown parking virtually at UT. of course with many of the F1 fans, and F1 booking agencies already booking their hotels for 2013, this may end up being more of a drag on the football game.
Yeah, wait'll the football fans get a load of F1 hotel pricing - they'll either sleep in their cars, sleep 8 to a room or skip it altogether. Hotel folks aren't dumb - they charge not only according to occupancy(or the lack thereof), BUT also charge what the incoming 'guests'('victims'?) will bear. They know from years of experience that there's a limit to pricing for the college fan crowd. Compare that to F1 $fans$ and there'll be LOTS of blurbiage in the local newspapers about this one. 'course, Jerry Jones -could- come to the rescue and offer up Jerry's World as an alternate side for the football crowd...he'd be laughin' all the way to da bank on that one. Probably make an F1 fan outa him for sure.
I live in the southeast and know how passionate college football is to its fans. But the deciding factors as to which event should move are these: the football game is a one-day affair, whereas the G.P. meet is three days. Also, as many people attend the game, many of them will commute on game day and not be staying in hotels; thus a date or location change would affect fewer people. I think the best solution, for 2013 at least, is to move the football game to Stillwater. As this will give OSU two home games in a row in the series, the answer to that would be to have the next two games in the series in Austin, just not on the same weekend as the G.P. The Big 12 will have to communcate with F1 as to the proposed future dates for the G.P. and then try to schedule around that, either having U.T. on the road, or having their bye week (as it was this year) on the weekend of the race.
