Syracuse University’s new athletics director Bryan Blair kicked off his first month with the Orange by announcing plans to upgrade JMA Wireless Dome, home of the school’s ACC football team.
According to Syracuse.com, Blair identified a three-year initiative to “weaponize the dome.”
“When you’ve got an enclosed atmosphere, we can control what you smell, what you see, what you hear. Every single aspect,” says Blair. “And that’s going to be a multi-year process to really dig into what it is we need from a technology standpoint and an infrastructure standpoint.”
Blair toured athletics facilities across the country, and now he plans to implement new elements at JMA Wireless Dome. He described the implementation process as trial and error in tandem with the chief facilities officer, Pete Sala, and his ideas extend beyond the building envelope to the tailgating experience. Blair proposed live music options and a festival atmosphere for Syracuse’s tailgating scene.
“The reality is the individuals and organizations that do it the best ask their fan base often what they want to see,” Blair said. “It’s not terribly complicated. I don’t know what historically has been done in that vein, but we’re going to assemble a lot of focus groups and ask people.”
To ask the fans, Blair plans to create focus groups and send digital surveys. Stakeholders will assess the possibilities of those results as they update the fan-facing elements of JME Wireless Dome as well as the gameday operations technology.
“I need to give our team the permission to try things,” Blair said. “Experiment, take some calculated risks, learn from them and grow from them. I think a lot of what we try and see over the first year, there’s going to be some trial and error; and that needs to be okay for us to get to where we want to go. We’re going to have to bump our head a couple times.”
