UTSA Does Not Need An On-Campus Stadium Right Now

The UTSA Roadrunners are the 2021 CUSA Champions. If you were at the championship game against WKU, you know that the Alamodome was a magical place to be. Between the awe-inspiring phone flashlight moment and just the sheer amount of noise, I'm surprised that the place is still standing. Oh, and did I mention the perfect 72 degree weather during the whole game?

Despite this, there are still somehow Dome naysayers. Here are 5 reasons why having an on-campus stadium would not be better than the Alamodome.

The Dome protects us all

Let's get the obvious out of the way. As I'm writing this, I still have a runny nose from the cold that I got from the UNT game a week ago. During that whole game, all I could think was "Wow, I wish I was at the Dome right now." Not even considering the game itself, it was cold, rainy, and miserable. Now contrast that with the championship game this past Friday. No one got wet, no one had to bundle up because it was so cold, and everyone had a great time in the 72 degrees. How many college teams can say that they've never had a weather delay at a home game?

The built-in home field advantage

I don't think I even need to write much for this, just watch this video and tell me we could do this in an outdoor stadium:

Have you ever driven in the area around campus?

UTSA is located right by the I-10 and 1604 intersection, and if you've ever driven there when it's a busy time of day, it's a nightmare. Not to mention Six Flags Fiesta Texas being across the street, as well as La Cantera and The Rim. The area is barely able to deal with the amount of traffic that goes through there, now add a college football stadium into the mix and that nightmare just got worse. I'm not saying that downtown is free of traffic, but it was built to handle that traffic. The UTSA area was not.

We are San Antonio's team, not just UTSA's

This post was inspired by Adrian from Alamodome Audible's Tweets today and this very good point came from one of those tweets

The Alamodome was built in hopes to attract an NFL team. When that didn't happen, it became the Roadrunner's home stadium when we began in 2011. We still do not have an NFL team, and we're most likely never going to, but you know what we do have? A D1 college football team that plays just a 20 minute walk away from the actual Alamo and just just won a conference championship. We are the city's biggest football team and we should act like it. Being right next to the Riverwalk is such a better and cooler place to be for the common person than all the way up at Main Campus. As we get more national recognition, our games will be worked into tourist's schedules. We are the biggest football team in San Antonio and we should act like it.

The future is brighter with the Alamodome

An argument that I've been seeing from Anti-Domers is that we aren't able to hit capacity in a stadium that can hold 72k. Why does that matter? Everyone who wants to go to a game can go, no one gets left out, and more importantly, there's room for growth. Similar to buying pants a size too small as a goal when you're trying to lose weight, that 72k is a goal for the future. It should be inspiring that we could potentially hold 72k at UTSA games in the future. You think it's loud now, they're going to have to hand out earplugs if we ever hit capacity. That number is a sign of the greater things that can come, and after this season, those dreams just got more realistic.