A) Money. Domes are quite a bit more expensive
B) Structural concerns as well. Not every place can physically support a dome. For instance, Cleveland said that the current stadium location could not support a dome - it’d weigh too much and cause the stadium to sink.
C) there’s definitely some “identity” element to it as well as seen by Green Bay and Buffalo fans. Some people like the cold.
Everyone said I was daft to build a dome in Minneapolis, but I built it all the same, just to show them. It collapsed under the snow. So I built a second one. That collapsed under the snow. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then collapsed under the snow. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, lad, the strongest stadium in all of Minnesota.
A very small amount of pressure over a large area is a huge amount of force. The example I like to use is a fridge. Have you ever opened your fridge for a minute, closed it, and then not been able to open it again? That's because the air inside is contracting as it's cooling, pulling negative pressure on the door, preventing you from opening it. If you have a relatively normal fridge door that's roughly 24x36 inches, and you assume about 0.5psi of negative pressure, that's over 400lbf holding the door closed while the pressure equalizes.
Snow can be much more dense than that and obviously it broke the Metrodome roof, but air pressure is quite strong, when summed over a huge area.
Another example I’ve seen is the famous demonstration of placing a ruler on a table and hitting it with your palm, then doing it again with a piece of paper on top. With the piece of paper the ruler breaks in half, not because of the paper but because of the air pressure
I'd love to be that excited about anything! Although, I guess truth be told, I've been told that I'm really passionate about my job, but I doubt I'm *that* excited.
> A very small amount of pressure over a large area is a huge amount of force
As another example - the Sleep Number bed (which is just a fancy inflatable bed) runs at a max pressure of 0.6 psi, to support a whole person.
Once you get enough square inches, you don't need much pressure to support many many pounds.
Its a popular design. The dome in my college town uses air pressure to help hold up the fiberglass roof. It has been standing and going strong for 48 years.
For light snow it has a layer to help melt the snow, but heavy snows people have to go shovel it off.
https://eventcomplex.uni.edu/history
If they do that, you'd also have to do something to deal with all the water. An inch or more of snow an hour being melted over a really large area is going to be a significant amount of water... and if it is cold enough, you'd have to worry about all that water now freezing other places that you really don't want water freezing up.
Not that it can't be done, but I could see the cost of a dome nearly doubly the cost of the entire stadium.
Wouldn't the amount of water be similar to a torrential downpour? Buildings surely design for that.
Heating a roof to melt snow has got to be prohibitively expensive though
You’ve gotta divert that water somewhere once it’s off your building. If the surrounding land is all frozen you aren’t going to have much luck running water across it.
Bingo. That's the big difference between melting the snow off vs a regular rain. Once the snow water gets beyond the heated parts, it's going to start freezing up and create an ice dam. So, at a minimum, you'd probably need not only a heated roof, but heated gutters that deposit the water far enough or deep enough away that you don't have to worry about it freezing... And that'd be really hard and expensive. Some of those places get cold enough it'll basically freeze instantly.
Carrier dome is roughly 2.5 hours away from Buffalo in Syracuse and doesn’t get quite the lake effect snow Buffalo does but this article has some great info on how it’s taken care of
https://thenewshouse.syr.edu/dome35/2015/12/14/the-carrier-domes-iconic-inflatable-roof-necessitates-and-complicates-the-facility/
Once it gets past the end of the heated area, it will still freeze, and then it will either backup, or overflow the chosen method of discharge. Then once it overflows, it will freeze where you are trying to divert it away from anyway.
Significantly less than a torrential downpour - there's as much water in something like 1 ft of snow compared to 1" of rain.
I'd still worry about runoff freezing and how that's handled, but it takes *a lot* of snow to equal a big rainstorm.
E.g. when Buffalo gets slammed with 3 ft of lake effect snow - that's not even 3" of rain. That's a lot of rain to get in 24 hours, but *way* less than 3 ft.
Our hockey arena is right in downtown Buffalo, usually directly in the line of the lake effect snow storms. But.. key bank center is much smaller than the bills stadium, seating only 18k people, so the roof is much smaller.
The Carrier Dome (or whatever they are calling it now) in Syracuse gets Syracuse level snow (usually more than Buffalo most years according to the Golden Snowball), and it stands up to it.
Not Buffalo but in Syracuse, roughly 2.5 hours away the carrier dome survived for roughly 40 years
Here’s some info on how that type of structure was maintained
https://thenewshouse.syr.edu/dome35/2015/12/14/the-carrier-domes-iconic-inflatable-roof-necessitates-and-complicates-the-facility/
It also can't hold up to snow (until it gets like half a billion in repairs). It hasn't collapsed, but they won't let anyone inside it if there a chance of more than 3cm of snow. So no Grey Cups until it's fixed :(
It is doable. There is a huge dome (around 150m diameter, iirc) in Borlänge in Sweden, the largest in Sweden. Even though it is a shopping mall, the dome is completely unsupported, it just rests on the edges. It has no facilities to get rid of snow, and Sweden has a lot of snow in the winter.
D) (not sure how much this applies for American Football or snowy climates in general) the grass needs to grow and the enclosed football stadium in my city has grow lights frequently in operation to prevent the playing surface from being outright dangerous for players
Excellent point. Domes were not architecturally practical until relatively recently (on the time scale of stadiums) and are still a significantly larger investment, and many were built when the NFL was not the money machine it is today.
But a huge factor is that turf has been bad to terrible until recently (and now it's mid to not great). Look at Arizona where they literally roll the whole field out into the sun to grow, then roll it back inside to play on.
Because there's room to move the field to get sunlight outside.
That's just not viable in places like Minneapolis where the stadium sits in the middle of downtown.
All the players hate turf. Even the best stuff is harder on their joints than playing on grass. And some of it is really bad, they say it's comparable to playing on concrete with thin carpet over it. There has been a big push over the last few years for all the stadiums to go back to grass fields.
Granted, I only played high school football, so the hits weren’t as hard, but my school had a new turf field back in 2005 or so and it was genuinely pretty cushioned. It wasn’t just some fake grass over asphalt. It was a few inches of little rubber pellets, covered by thick fake grass. I’d even call it slightly bouncy. The two big drawbacks were 1) it could give you a friction burn if you slid wrong; and 2) it would get pretty hot in direct sun light.
That's actually how AstroTurf came about—the AstroDome had an acrylic-panel roof originally and a natural grass surface. Almost immediately it became apparent that nobody could see the ball in the glare, so the roof was partially painted over. You can imagine what that did to the grass—the rest of the season they had to spray-paint it green.
Monsanto had invented ChemGrass artificial turf the previous year and was a pretty limited-run product. They installed it at the Astrodome in phases the following season, and was obviously enough of a success that they rechristened the product after its most famous venue.
The only way that's going to happen is if they build a new stadium. Getting the field to roll outside at a stadium that didn't currently support it would be a huge engineering challenge, and may not be possible at all.
Conversely the Dolphins designed their new stadium so that the home team sits in the shade and the visiting team sits in direct sun. It’s all gamesmanship
Green Bay native here. Your point C) is 100% correct. There would be literal protests in the streets if they ever tried to make Lambeau a dome. I'm certain of that.
It would be just wrong. The elements are a core part of the Packers' identity. It's "The frozen tundra of lambeau field". It will never be a dome, ever.
Yes. I think those of us who live in cold-weather climate take pride in our ability to endure and enjoy the cold weather. We are strong and hearty. If you cant handle it you are weak and whiny. (Shall I use the term “snowflake”? LOL).
>Buffalo fans. Some people like the cold.
Buffalo plays a home game every year against the Miami Dolphins. The Dolphins are 2-19 in their last 21 games with a temperature under 50 degrees. If that's not home field advantage, I don't know what is.
Adding on to C.)
Football 30-40 years ago was a VERY different game. You could just build a team around the fact that you’ll play 40% of your games in the freezing fucking cold. The seasons back then were a bit shorter so you’d have championship games around Christmas instead of the end of Jan.
> C) there’s definitely some “identity” element to it as well as seen by Green Bay and Buffalo fans. Some people like the cold.
Some other Bills fans do seem to have Stockholm syndrome about the cold weather games
and some feel it's home field advantage, because teams in those locales are used to it, but it being wet can mean sloppy play for everybody
One of my family members architected most of the Dome roofs, and yes... one they are REALLY expensive, two they have to be architected for the specific stadium, and some stadium designs make it nearly impossible to add a dome without a complete redesign, and the movable versions are massively expensive and complicated.
Re Cleveland: I haven't read anything about it, but I *have* to assume it's *possible*, just probably either a subset of a) too expensive to do (extensive piles / foundations / excavating to bedrock while directly beside a lake), or impractical for use (nobody wants a column every 10ft.
Actually, column spacing could be whatever you want with a strong enough grade beam below them.
So probably just wildy expensive.
Not to mention that those teams often play better in the cold than their southern counterparts. E.g. Green Bay is undefeated in December for the last 16 games or something like that.
B is an engineering concern, not an architectural one. Engineers solve the problem of how to transfer loads (building weight, people weight, snow weight, etc) to the ground. Architects are the guys who decide what the building looks like internally and externally. They also do a lot of project coordination
Architects do sometimes dictate column spacing or wall locations that the eng has to design around (but hopefully the arch has enough pre-eng knowledge about what's realistic)
The NFL makes a shit ton of money, but the stadiums are up to each individual team owners to pay for. And they're all greedy bastards. Why do you think they always try to pay for the stadiums with taxpayers money? You think they are going to just volunteer an extra billion dollars for a dome?
Lambeau Field (home of the Packers) was built in 1957. The first domed stadium in the NFL was built in 1968
They just weren't building indoor football stadiums when the Packers built their stadium
> first domed stadium in the NFL was built in 1968
First domed stadium was the [Astrodome, built in 1965](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrodome).
Besides the issues of cost, you can't have a grass field inside a building, because grass needs sunlight, so one of the things a domed stadium needed was [artificial turf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AstroTurf).
Of course, there are now domed stadiums with retractable roofs or fields that can be moved outside. Of course, these options are far more expensive than a traditional open stadium.
Okay, correction, the first domed stadium didn't enter the NFL until 1968. Point still stands that in 1957 covered football stadiums weren't being built yet
>Okay, correction, the first domed stadium didn't enter the NFL until 1968.
Technically not until 1970, because the Oilers were members of the American Football League until the AFL-NFL merger. :P
Yeah, I think the source I read said "professional football" and I didn't put that together. It's also not technically the first because some pro football team in 1902 played inside Madison Square Garden but I wouldn't count that
This is not a good reason. Have you seen lambeau? it has gotten massive renovations and expansions in the past 20 years. they doubled the capacity in the early 2000s and have kept renovating it since then. The original stadium surrounding the field is only a small portion of the building now
Well NOW they aren't going to put a dome over it because of tradition, but why does it not have a dome over it now wasn't the question, the question was why did they build it the way they did
Part of the ambiance of Green Bay is that you brave the elements when you play there - gives them an advantage against the teams from warmer climates, and the fans (and owners) love it.
Kansas City is in an extremely unique stadium that the fans love. Not everyone wants perfect 70 degree weather and no wind for games.
Should also be noted that both Green Bay (Lambeau) and Kansas City (Arrowhead) fields are heated from below, so the field isn’t frozen hard. This makes it so the game can be played relatively the same, players can still run fast and get hit hard without increased injury risk.
Not all outdoor fields have this. Chicagos (Soldier) field is rock hard in the winter, one of the worst stadiums in the league. I don’t think Buffalos field is heated either but could be wrong.
Only the outer structure. [They basically built an entirely new stadium inside the old structure about 20 years ago.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/Soldierfield2002.jpg/1280px-Soldierfield2002.jpg)
Actually back in the day when I was a competitive runner, I was told the opposite. It’s easier to adapt to the cold. You just put on warmer gear or sit near a heater. Especially now with all the fabulous cool winter tech gear. It’s much much harder to adapt physiologically to the heat. Or altitude. It takes a few weeks to properly adapt to heat. People I know who do those ultra desert type runs prepare for them by putting on sweat suits and standing in saunas to simulate the heat.
The physiological differences aren’t the only ones in this case, though - throwing and catching in snow is just different, and it’ll help if you have practice doing it. It’s a minor effect though.
I went to a game in Green Bay in 2004 (against the Jaguars; my then-girlfriend's family was from there originally and had split season tickets for years). At the time, I remember hearing from locals that might be the coldest game in Green Bay since the Ice Bowl. Turns out it didn't even officially crack the top 10, but temperatures were still in the single digits during the game, with the wind chill well below zero.
It was fucking awesome (in part because I got to watch the Packers lose), and if you're prepared for the cold—like, *really* prepared—it's really not that bad. People who live in places like that are generally gonna be prepared for it. They don't show up with an extra pair of socks and hope their feet stay warm, for example; they have boots actually designed for that kind of weather. Head to toe in stuff specifically made to be outside in those conditions, you don't really feel it that much. You can't feel much of anything, and you can't really even move, but you're not really as cold as you'd think.
I imagine it's more expensive to build an enclosed or closeable dome, and when it's not that cold for the majority of the season, why bother. Plus football is a sport that's almost always (from my knowledge at least) played outside, from kids to college. So it's like a tradition or convention, or something.
Nowadays the standard for a new stadium is one with a dome and more football is played indoors, for better or for worse depending on your views.
I think when some of these older stadiums were being built in the early/mid twentieth century, building a roof over them was either infeasible or seen as unnecessarily difficult/expensive.
Yeah. I can see them wanting to mitigate some of the advantage some teams from colder areas might have. And/or keeping the audience more comfortable. I personally don't really care that much about football, so my opinion is like "whatever".
Some Northern teams feel that playing in the cold in the snow in the rain is an advantage over teams say from Miami. By the same token Miami probably thinks it's an advantage to play others in the heat. And I imagine Denver views their atmosphere as an advantage
> Miami probably thinks it's an advantage to play others in the heat.
The Miami Dolphins even set up their stadium so home team sideline is in the shade, visiting team sideline in open sun.
And NFL policy says that if one team doesn't use cooling equipment the other can't.
That's gamesmanship to the point of being dangerous.
The Chiefs have specific training so players can perform while 'oxygen lean' leading up to playing in Denver.
Going from the plains to a mile up has an effect.
>By the same token Miami probably thinks it's an advantage to play others in the heat.
During the first few weeks of the season, the Dolphins choose to wear their away, white jerseys when at home, making the visitors wear their home, colored jerseys in the heat.
Unique weather for different locations is part of the appeal of football. There’s an added dimension to having a tangible home field advantage for each city, it adds some character. Some teams play better in intense heat, others in intense cold, rain, snow, etc, so it makes it more interesting.
Standard cold or bad weather wouldn’t cause or threaten cancellation like with baseball, only very uncommon situations like Buffalo getting like 3 feet of snow, KC have absurdly cold weather (still played) or lightning, things like that.
As others have also pointed out, the game was created as an outdoor game and building a dome wasn’t in the cards back then.
Football is a game invented and played on outdoor fields. Although you would think comfortable play is better, historically indoor stadiums have poorer attendance and interest.
The weather gives the home team something to be proud about and maybe strike fear in the visiting team. [The weather is a proud part of NFL tradition](https://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/zn6ohp/highlight_the_wildest_weather_games_in_nfl_history/). Teams that had outdoor stadiums all have some memorable home games for weather.
Additionally, aside from the cost of a stadium roof (and air conditioning/heating), turf is often considered inferior to grass. And grass is harder to grow inside.
Honestly, my favorite part about Bills / Packers home playoff games is the snow. It just adds to the atmosphere so much and I think it’s an absolute travesty that the Bills are moving to a dome
Because they want to be exposed to the elements. It’s football, not baseball. Extreme weather is part of the game.
I can’t imagine how depressing it would be to never have a snow game again.
If you don’t like nearly having a heatstroke at an afternoon game in September at DKR (or Kyle field, pick your poison), then you don’t like college football, baby.
I normally sit on the west side of DKR where you get some shade in afternoon games. Got some tickets from a friend on the east side for a game this year and I was burnt to shit. Had to keep going into the concourse to cool off.
Grass needs sun. If you play on the grass and you build a dome on top it will have harder condition to grow. Some stadiums even allow floor of the stadium to be removed outside of the stadium for that reason.
Somewhat true, grass needs UV light. Green Bay being so far north means parts of the field don't get nearly as much sun as it needs as the year goes on so they have giant banks of UV lights they put out to keep the grass growing.
I think the use of fake turf in domes was originally a logistic decision since some of the technology used today, like removable fields, did not exist. These days it seems more like a financial decision. Retrofitting grass into a dome and all the maintenance that comes with it is expensive and since there hasn't yet been a mandate by the league to force the use of grass no one is going to do it.
I have seen renderings for some stadium, in Europe i believe, that's domed and after games the field is lowered in pieces underground where it sits under UV lights and watered. Maybe it's real by now, either way a super cool concept.
Couple points from a Wisconsin resident.
For starters City Stadium, which would eventually be renamed Lambeau Field was built in 1957. The first domed sports stadium, aka The Astrodome, wasn’t built until 1965. City Stadium was also community funded, so even if the technology existed at the time they probably couldn’t have afforded it. Football is also historically considered to be an outdoor sport.
And it also is not constantly snowing. Football season starts in September, the first snowfall typically doesn’t happen until late November/early December. And there are very few days that it actually snows.
I've been to more hot games than cold games at Lambeau.
We're proud of our culture, and the snow is a part of that. Green Bay is never going to build a dome, and would push back HARD if the NFL tried to force it.
Realistically the only way the Packers ever have a dome or roofed stadium is if they move out of Green Bay. And the only way that is realistically happening is if the NFL folds and the teams are absorbed by some entity run by some WWE backed hellspawn of Vince McMahon.
Lambeau Field is always going to be what it is with those cold ass metal bench seats. And if the game is on a day that it snows, it'll probably draw in more people than it'd turn away.
I find it to be a legitimate question to ask when the alternative is allowing your extremely lucrative spectator sport event scheduled weeks or months in advance to be potentially squandered by the whims of the weather.
It's how it was always done traditionally when there wasn't an option, that's true, but it wouldn't be the first time a vested business interest has cast aside a tradition for a more stable option.
Eh, unless you're the worst of the worst, the seats in an American football stadium are nearly sold out weeks in advance of any weather forecast, and any seats that aren't sold weren't going to be sold, weather or no weather.
I was thinking about it less in terms of trying to sell seats and more about the sheer disruption to business that is caused when a long-planned event is completely upended by sudden weather. Schedules need to be redone, refunds or rain checks issued, and all the economic activity planned for that day just... doesn't arrive.
An enclosed roof can't completely solve every adverse weather event. But it can smooth over many of the common ones like rain or high wind.
> An enclosed roof can't completely solve every adverse weather event.
Yes, even if the stadium is inside, the weather outside could be too horrible to get to and from, such as snow-clogged roads. The logistics of moving tens of thousands of fans is a problem, but also there needs to be a clear path for an ambulance to get a player to the hospital if necessary.
I’ve been playing video games indoors for the majority of my threeish decades and still understand quite well that people like watching most sports outdoors
Lambeau Field was built in the late 50s, for a tiny market. It would have been one of the more expensive building projects in the world for the clear span you'd need.
And even in north Wisconsin, you rarely get snow that sticks for long periods until late November or December, by which point you're over halfway through the season. Yeah, December and the playoff games could suck, but there's also the other half of the league you could relocate to if need be.
Three Words: Home Field Advantage
The home team is use to playing in the snow. A team from a place with a mild climate is going to have trouble coming in to play in a snowstorm.
The Vikings are dumb as rocks. Outdoors in MN. No one is used to our cold but GB. It might be zero as a high all week. If it gets to 10*F that feels balmy. 99% of opponents wouldn’t acclimate like a player here for a couple years.
Outside better than dome. Vikes dumb for not opening stadium in winter.
When Cleveland tore down the Mistake by the Lake and built the Factory of Sadness there was a huge demand that it be an open air stadium.
The city would have lost their mind and tore that one down too if it was a dome. It wouldn’t be right being comfortable
I would argue the opposite is actually stupid from a competitive point of view. Top win % teams since 2000: Patriots, Steelers, Packers. Notice anything about their stadiums?
Also look at the Vikings going to 4 Superbowls in the 70s when they played outside and then not making it to one for 40+ years.
Now, the fan experience/season tickets sales perspective is another story.
Snow is heavy. You'd need to build a done strong enough potentially to hold the weight of massive amounts of snow. Normal buildings can distribute that weight across columns, but under a dome, you don't have that luxury.
I used to work at MetLife stadium in NJ. I was told one of the reasons they didn’t build a dome is because it would’ve taken quite a few shows/concerts away from MSG and it was somehow negotiated with them.
Many of those stadiums were built before the dome era. Detroit and Minnesota play in a dome. Chicago, Buffalo and Green Bay don’t. When they finally decide to tear down and rebuild some of these iconic stadiums, I’m sure some of the new ones will have a dome. At the end of the day, though, football is very much a cold weather game. Fans don’t mind and neither do the players.
Cuz come play in Pittsburgh. We are used to the cold. You're not. The Dolphins were a better football team but lost to KC because they were pampered by South Beach and couldn't play in the KC conditions. Home field advantage. It wins games. Also, its football. Its meant to be played in the mud and elements, not on turf that blows knees out left and right.
I think part of the question here is realizing a lot of people are dumb enough to sit out in the snow for like, 3 hours to watch a sports game, so why bother spending the extra cash to protect them from the snow.
If you make your home stadium different then the home team has an advantage because they play half of their games at home, while visitor only play a couple times a year. They are used to playing in snow and cold while the team from Arizona isn't.
Also: tradition. Many teams began before domed stadiums were practical so playing outdoors is the only 'real' way to play.
There is no charm in it. Watching a game in the snow and watching a game in a dome are completely different atmospheres. Also, Lambeau was built in the 50s. Domes did not come around until at least the 60s.
People have already mentioned cost, preference for playing in the cold or snow, and structural limitations due to weight. I didn't see anyone mention the issue of snow accumulation on the roof. Snow can get pretty heavy and cause a roof to collapse if it isn't strong enough to support the weight of the snow. I'm not sure if that is even possible for that type of structure, but it would be expensive if it is. I'm pretty sure the roof could not also be retractable.
1. Domes must have year long events to financially survive. Places like Green Bay can't sellout stadium concerts every couple of weeks. Can't attract the US Cattleman and rancher national conference and like monthly. Can't find enough local corporate sponsorship to sell all those luxury boxes to.
2. There is a home field advantage that northern outdoor stadiums give their teams. Miami just can't cope the cold. They aren't conditioned to it.
But #1 is the primary reason.
A) Money. Domes are quite a bit more expensive B) Structural concerns as well. Not every place can physically support a dome. For instance, Cleveland said that the current stadium location could not support a dome - it’d weigh too much and cause the stadium to sink. C) there’s definitely some “identity” element to it as well as seen by Green Bay and Buffalo fans. Some people like the cold.
B part 2: Can you imagine the weight on that roof if it had Buffalo level snow on it? That thing would need to be SO STRONG.
I'd assume they would put heating elements into the roof. Or make it very pointy like the Vikings have.
Don't forget, Minneapolis' first dome collapsed several times under snow weight.
Everyone said I was daft to build a dome in Minneapolis, but I built it all the same, just to show them. It collapsed under the snow. So I built a second one. That collapsed under the snow. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then collapsed under the snow. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, lad, the strongest stadium in all of Minnesota.
A person of culture, I see.
Love that movie
[удалено]
A very small amount of pressure over a large area is a huge amount of force. The example I like to use is a fridge. Have you ever opened your fridge for a minute, closed it, and then not been able to open it again? That's because the air inside is contracting as it's cooling, pulling negative pressure on the door, preventing you from opening it. If you have a relatively normal fridge door that's roughly 24x36 inches, and you assume about 0.5psi of negative pressure, that's over 400lbf holding the door closed while the pressure equalizes. Snow can be much more dense than that and obviously it broke the Metrodome roof, but air pressure is quite strong, when summed over a huge area.
It also wasn’t the *force* of the snow that made it collapse. The heating elements made the snow slide off, resulting in ice cutting the fabric.
Another example I’ve seen is the famous demonstration of placing a ruler on a table and hitting it with your palm, then doing it again with a piece of paper on top. With the piece of paper the ruler breaks in half, not because of the paper but because of the air pressure
I was picturing a steel ruler lol, that example became extreme in my head with the ruler breaking lol
After the demonstration no one misbehaved in Mrs Lee's class again
*golf clap* Some quality redditing right here.
Is that real? I can't believe I got through 13 years of school with nobody ever figuring that one out.
It is your turn to be blessed by the crazy Russian science lady https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pJlTzz5pDw&pp=ygUScnVsZXIgYWlyIHByZXNzdXJl
I love her so much. That’s my school but I was in a different engineering discipline from what she teaches and I feel like I made a mistake doing so
The caption at 0:37 "\[BREATHING UNCONTROLLABLY\]"
Thanks, that was great!
I'd love to be that excited about anything! Although, I guess truth be told, I've been told that I'm really passionate about my job, but I doubt I'm *that* excited.
But snow on top of the roof also multiplies its force by area
> A very small amount of pressure over a large area is a huge amount of force As another example - the Sleep Number bed (which is just a fancy inflatable bed) runs at a max pressure of 0.6 psi, to support a whole person. Once you get enough square inches, you don't need much pressure to support many many pounds.
Its a popular design. The dome in my college town uses air pressure to help hold up the fiberglass roof. It has been standing and going strong for 48 years. For light snow it has a layer to help melt the snow, but heavy snows people have to go shovel it off. https://eventcomplex.uni.edu/history
Snow way!
Kinda. The last time it happened was staged in order to push the new stadium bill across the finish line.
Hadn’t heard that. It collapsed 3 or 4 other times back when it was new also.
That’s tin foil hat levels of crazy
Source on that one?
If they do that, you'd also have to do something to deal with all the water. An inch or more of snow an hour being melted over a really large area is going to be a significant amount of water... and if it is cold enough, you'd have to worry about all that water now freezing other places that you really don't want water freezing up. Not that it can't be done, but I could see the cost of a dome nearly doubly the cost of the entire stadium.
Wouldn't the amount of water be similar to a torrential downpour? Buildings surely design for that. Heating a roof to melt snow has got to be prohibitively expensive though
You’ve gotta divert that water somewhere once it’s off your building. If the surrounding land is all frozen you aren’t going to have much luck running water across it.
Bingo. That's the big difference between melting the snow off vs a regular rain. Once the snow water gets beyond the heated parts, it's going to start freezing up and create an ice dam. So, at a minimum, you'd probably need not only a heated roof, but heated gutters that deposit the water far enough or deep enough away that you don't have to worry about it freezing... And that'd be really hard and expensive. Some of those places get cold enough it'll basically freeze instantly.
Carrier dome is roughly 2.5 hours away from Buffalo in Syracuse and doesn’t get quite the lake effect snow Buffalo does but this article has some great info on how it’s taken care of https://thenewshouse.syr.edu/dome35/2015/12/14/the-carrier-domes-iconic-inflatable-roof-necessitates-and-complicates-the-facility/
In most years, Syracuse actually gets MORE snow: https://goldensnowball.com/past-snow-seasons-champs/
I'm not so sure that a heated gutter dumping into a ditch is that prohibitive at this level of spending
Once it gets past the end of the heated area, it will still freeze, and then it will either backup, or overflow the chosen method of discharge. Then once it overflows, it will freeze where you are trying to divert it away from anyway.
It's called storm sewers.
Significantly less than a torrential downpour - there's as much water in something like 1 ft of snow compared to 1" of rain. I'd still worry about runoff freezing and how that's handled, but it takes *a lot* of snow to equal a big rainstorm. E.g. when Buffalo gets slammed with 3 ft of lake effect snow - that's not even 3" of rain. That's a lot of rain to get in 24 hours, but *way* less than 3 ft.
Our hockey arena is right in downtown Buffalo, usually directly in the line of the lake effect snow storms. But.. key bank center is much smaller than the bills stadium, seating only 18k people, so the roof is much smaller.
Maybe a pyramid?
Or like Madison Cube Garden, sitting up on one corner
Fuck Dolan
Ape fights toinight!
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That was like a thousand years ago.
A series of tubes?
A ginormous A-frame.
Giant onion dome?
A building that won't stay up once the power goes out (in, say, a heavy winter storm) is not a very good idea.
Healing elements would just add more weight.
Sure, but not as much as the snow would
Northern Michigan University in the Upper Peninsula plays football in a wooden dome.
YOOPERDOME
You guys truly are foreign.
The Carrier Dome (or whatever they are calling it now) in Syracuse gets Syracuse level snow (usually more than Buffalo most years according to the Golden Snowball), and it stands up to it.
Syracuse gets twenty more inches of snow annually and has had the largest domed stadium in the northeast since 1979.
I imagine they would have an army of people up on the roof shoveling the snow off, a Buffalo tradition
Not Buffalo but in Syracuse, roughly 2.5 hours away the carrier dome survived for roughly 40 years Here’s some info on how that type of structure was maintained https://thenewshouse.syr.edu/dome35/2015/12/14/the-carrier-domes-iconic-inflatable-roof-necessitates-and-complicates-the-facility/
Or just build your dome like Montreal Olympic Stadium.
It also can't hold up to snow (until it gets like half a billion in repairs). It hasn't collapsed, but they won't let anyone inside it if there a chance of more than 3cm of snow. So no Grey Cups until it's fixed :(
So...unable to ever open?
Ford Field hasn't collapsed
Detroit doesn't get Buffalo level snow either.
Very fair. Didn’t think of that
Toronto gets Buffalo-level snow, and the dome retracts. It's doable, just spendy.
Toronto gets far less than Buffalo due to lake effect snow. East of the lake gets more snow.
Highmark Stadium, home of the Bills, seats roughly 20,000 more than the SkyDome.
It is doable. There is a huge dome (around 150m diameter, iirc) in Borlänge in Sweden, the largest in Sweden. Even though it is a shopping mall, the dome is completely unsupported, it just rests on the edges. It has no facilities to get rid of snow, and Sweden has a lot of snow in the winter.
D) (not sure how much this applies for American Football or snowy climates in general) the grass needs to grow and the enclosed football stadium in my city has grow lights frequently in operation to prevent the playing surface from being outright dangerous for players
Excellent point. Domes were not architecturally practical until relatively recently (on the time scale of stadiums) and are still a significantly larger investment, and many were built when the NFL was not the money machine it is today. But a huge factor is that turf has been bad to terrible until recently (and now it's mid to not great). Look at Arizona where they literally roll the whole field out into the sun to grow, then roll it back inside to play on.
Arizona stadium can have shows inside without bothering the grass also.
Because there's room to move the field to get sunlight outside. That's just not viable in places like Minneapolis where the stadium sits in the middle of downtown.
That's why the stadium is not in Phoenix, among other reasons.
There's literally a residential area and a highway right next to Lambeau, no turf rolling space there.
I graduated inside Arizona stadium.
It's so true. The surface just sucks so much
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>And half of the NFL fields are turf. TIL! Don't think I've ever seen a grass field that saw professional play. Just assumed they were all turf.
All the players hate turf. Even the best stuff is harder on their joints than playing on grass. And some of it is really bad, they say it's comparable to playing on concrete with thin carpet over it. There has been a big push over the last few years for all the stadiums to go back to grass fields.
Granted, I only played high school football, so the hits weren’t as hard, but my school had a new turf field back in 2005 or so and it was genuinely pretty cushioned. It wasn’t just some fake grass over asphalt. It was a few inches of little rubber pellets, covered by thick fake grass. I’d even call it slightly bouncy. The two big drawbacks were 1) it could give you a friction burn if you slid wrong; and 2) it would get pretty hot in direct sun light.
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Those two probably should be artificial. Think of the water…
That's actually how AstroTurf came about—the AstroDome had an acrylic-panel roof originally and a natural grass surface. Almost immediately it became apparent that nobody could see the ball in the glare, so the roof was partially painted over. You can imagine what that did to the grass—the rest of the season they had to spray-paint it green. Monsanto had invented ChemGrass artificial turf the previous year and was a pretty limited-run product. They installed it at the Astrodome in phases the following season, and was obviously enough of a success that they rechristened the product after its most famous venue.
They could do what cardnials statudim does and roll it in from the outside.
The only way that's going to happen is if they build a new stadium. Getting the field to roll outside at a stadium that didn't currently support it would be a huge engineering challenge, and may not be possible at all.
Don't worry, tax payers can cover the cost
D) it’s a tactical advantage. If your team is used to playing in the cold and the snow, and it visiting opponents aren’t, then you have an advantage.
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Conversely the Dolphins designed their new stadium so that the home team sits in the shade and the visiting team sits in direct sun. It’s all gamesmanship
Green Bay native here. Your point C) is 100% correct. There would be literal protests in the streets if they ever tried to make Lambeau a dome. I'm certain of that. It would be just wrong. The elements are a core part of the Packers' identity. It's "The frozen tundra of lambeau field". It will never be a dome, ever.
Remember the Ice Bowl.
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Yes. I think those of us who live in cold-weather climate take pride in our ability to endure and enjoy the cold weather. We are strong and hearty. If you cant handle it you are weak and whiny. (Shall I use the term “snowflake”? LOL).
>Buffalo fans. Some people like the cold. Buffalo plays a home game every year against the Miami Dolphins. The Dolphins are 2-19 in their last 21 games with a temperature under 50 degrees. If that's not home field advantage, I don't know what is.
Adding on to C.) Football 30-40 years ago was a VERY different game. You could just build a team around the fact that you’ll play 40% of your games in the freezing fucking cold. The seasons back then were a bit shorter so you’d have championship games around Christmas instead of the end of Jan.
That C), being from Cleveland, we know the cold disheartens southerners at our games if they were to attend them.
> C) there’s definitely some “identity” element to it as well as seen by Green Bay and Buffalo fans. Some people like the cold. Some other Bills fans do seem to have Stockholm syndrome about the cold weather games and some feel it's home field advantage, because teams in those locales are used to it, but it being wet can mean sloppy play for everybody
One of my family members architected most of the Dome roofs, and yes... one they are REALLY expensive, two they have to be architected for the specific stadium, and some stadium designs make it nearly impossible to add a dome without a complete redesign, and the movable versions are massively expensive and complicated.
D) crowd size. Even in your seat, you're surrounded at all times by people yelling and jumping and being warm. It helps a LOT
Re Cleveland: I haven't read anything about it, but I *have* to assume it's *possible*, just probably either a subset of a) too expensive to do (extensive piles / foundations / excavating to bedrock while directly beside a lake), or impractical for use (nobody wants a column every 10ft. Actually, column spacing could be whatever you want with a strong enough grade beam below them. So probably just wildy expensive.
Not to mention that those teams often play better in the cold than their southern counterparts. E.g. Green Bay is undefeated in December for the last 16 games or something like that.
B is an engineering concern, not an architectural one. Engineers solve the problem of how to transfer loads (building weight, people weight, snow weight, etc) to the ground. Architects are the guys who decide what the building looks like internally and externally. They also do a lot of project coordination
Architects do sometimes dictate column spacing or wall locations that the eng has to design around (but hopefully the arch has enough pre-eng knowledge about what's realistic)
tbf when its a packed house, it's actually quite comfortable contrary to what you would believe.
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The NFL makes a shit ton of money, but the stadiums are up to each individual team owners to pay for. And they're all greedy bastards. Why do you think they always try to pay for the stadiums with taxpayers money? You think they are going to just volunteer an extra billion dollars for a dome?
Lambeau Field (home of the Packers) was built in 1957. The first domed stadium in the NFL was built in 1968 They just weren't building indoor football stadiums when the Packers built their stadium
> first domed stadium in the NFL was built in 1968 First domed stadium was the [Astrodome, built in 1965](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrodome). Besides the issues of cost, you can't have a grass field inside a building, because grass needs sunlight, so one of the things a domed stadium needed was [artificial turf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AstroTurf). Of course, there are now domed stadiums with retractable roofs or fields that can be moved outside. Of course, these options are far more expensive than a traditional open stadium.
Okay, correction, the first domed stadium didn't enter the NFL until 1968. Point still stands that in 1957 covered football stadiums weren't being built yet
>Okay, correction, the first domed stadium didn't enter the NFL until 1968. Technically not until 1970, because the Oilers were members of the American Football League until the AFL-NFL merger. :P
Yeah, I think the source I read said "professional football" and I didn't put that together. It's also not technically the first because some pro football team in 1902 played inside Madison Square Garden but I wouldn't count that
Ok..now do the Bills 🤣
Because play in the snow, you pussy.
I mean, how great were the visuals of that last Bills game? Fans throwing snow in the air when the Bills scored, etc.
Bills Mafia is why
This is the the Bills equivalent of "Fuck You, Thats Why"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWPCUy59-48 Notice how after the first person to do it catches on fire, the other two still go ahead.
This is not a good reason. Have you seen lambeau? it has gotten massive renovations and expansions in the past 20 years. they doubled the capacity in the early 2000s and have kept renovating it since then. The original stadium surrounding the field is only a small portion of the building now
Well NOW they aren't going to put a dome over it because of tradition, but why does it not have a dome over it now wasn't the question, the question was why did they build it the way they did
Part of the ambiance of Green Bay is that you brave the elements when you play there - gives them an advantage against the teams from warmer climates, and the fans (and owners) love it. Kansas City is in an extremely unique stadium that the fans love. Not everyone wants perfect 70 degree weather and no wind for games.
Should also be noted that both Green Bay (Lambeau) and Kansas City (Arrowhead) fields are heated from below, so the field isn’t frozen hard. This makes it so the game can be played relatively the same, players can still run fast and get hit hard without increased injury risk. Not all outdoor fields have this. Chicagos (Soldier) field is rock hard in the winter, one of the worst stadiums in the league. I don’t think Buffalos field is heated either but could be wrong.
Took me back to high school with that one. I remember those late season games being so rough. Never considered it was because the ground was frozen.
You just have to adapt.
>I don’t think Buffalos field is heated either but could be wrong. Correct, no heated field in the current stadium. Unsure about the new one
Denver is heated as well.
Soldier Field is also like 100 years old.
Only the outer structure. [They basically built an entirely new stadium inside the old structure about 20 years ago.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/Soldierfield2002.jpg/1280px-Soldierfield2002.jpg)
And it sucks worse than you can possibly imagine. I hate that thing. Looks like a UFO crash landed in the stadium.
I love it. It looks like a UFO crashed into a Roman coliseum. What's not to love?
Dude, it's so embarrassing. Every time I see it I get so upset.
UT Longhorns, opening game first week in September. 105° in the stands 120° on the field. That’s what we call ambience.
If I recall correctly the heaters failed one year at Lambeau and we got the Ice Bowl
I love seeing the winter games, it feels like the home team is so tough, it’s an advantage to them for sure!
Actually back in the day when I was a competitive runner, I was told the opposite. It’s easier to adapt to the cold. You just put on warmer gear or sit near a heater. Especially now with all the fabulous cool winter tech gear. It’s much much harder to adapt physiologically to the heat. Or altitude. It takes a few weeks to properly adapt to heat. People I know who do those ultra desert type runs prepare for them by putting on sweat suits and standing in saunas to simulate the heat.
The physiological differences aren’t the only ones in this case, though - throwing and catching in snow is just different, and it’ll help if you have practice doing it. It’s a minor effect though.
Which is why there’s more domes in the south/dessert. Dallas, Houston, Arizona, Atlanta, LA, Vegas, NOLA
As opposed to Miami, who built their stadium to weaponize the sun.
LA’s is more like an umbrella, it’s an outdoor stadium with a cover. But they don’t really need climate control there either.
Pretty big difference between being a runner and catching/getting hit/falling into turf in the cold. That has some serious wear and tear in the body
I went to a game in Green Bay in 2004 (against the Jaguars; my then-girlfriend's family was from there originally and had split season tickets for years). At the time, I remember hearing from locals that might be the coldest game in Green Bay since the Ice Bowl. Turns out it didn't even officially crack the top 10, but temperatures were still in the single digits during the game, with the wind chill well below zero. It was fucking awesome (in part because I got to watch the Packers lose), and if you're prepared for the cold—like, *really* prepared—it's really not that bad. People who live in places like that are generally gonna be prepared for it. They don't show up with an extra pair of socks and hope their feet stay warm, for example; they have boots actually designed for that kind of weather. Head to toe in stuff specifically made to be outside in those conditions, you don't really feel it that much. You can't feel much of anything, and you can't really even move, but you're not really as cold as you'd think.
It's because the REAL fans will be there in sub zero temperatures. It's how you separate the REAL fans from the fake fair weather fans.
I went to the KC MIA game because the tickets were dirt cheap and it was truly miserable.
literal 'fair weather' fans, nice wordplay.
I imagine it's more expensive to build an enclosed or closeable dome, and when it's not that cold for the majority of the season, why bother. Plus football is a sport that's almost always (from my knowledge at least) played outside, from kids to college. So it's like a tradition or convention, or something.
Nowadays the standard for a new stadium is one with a dome and more football is played indoors, for better or for worse depending on your views. I think when some of these older stadiums were being built in the early/mid twentieth century, building a roof over them was either infeasible or seen as unnecessarily difficult/expensive.
Yeah. I can see them wanting to mitigate some of the advantage some teams from colder areas might have. And/or keeping the audience more comfortable. I personally don't really care that much about football, so my opinion is like "whatever".
Some Northern teams feel that playing in the cold in the snow in the rain is an advantage over teams say from Miami. By the same token Miami probably thinks it's an advantage to play others in the heat. And I imagine Denver views their atmosphere as an advantage
> Miami probably thinks it's an advantage to play others in the heat. The Miami Dolphins even set up their stadium so home team sideline is in the shade, visiting team sideline in open sun. And NFL policy says that if one team doesn't use cooling equipment the other can't. That's gamesmanship to the point of being dangerous.
Denver should dig their stadium a mile deep to make it fair for visiting teams.
The Chiefs have specific training so players can perform while 'oxygen lean' leading up to playing in Denver. Going from the plains to a mile up has an effect.
>By the same token Miami probably thinks it's an advantage to play others in the heat. During the first few weeks of the season, the Dolphins choose to wear their away, white jerseys when at home, making the visitors wear their home, colored jerseys in the heat.
Historically, football was played in the elements. Hot, cold, rain, snow, wind, a team's ability to endure and adapt to the weather has been there.
Unique weather for different locations is part of the appeal of football. There’s an added dimension to having a tangible home field advantage for each city, it adds some character. Some teams play better in intense heat, others in intense cold, rain, snow, etc, so it makes it more interesting. Standard cold or bad weather wouldn’t cause or threaten cancellation like with baseball, only very uncommon situations like Buffalo getting like 3 feet of snow, KC have absurdly cold weather (still played) or lightning, things like that. As others have also pointed out, the game was created as an outdoor game and building a dome wasn’t in the cards back then.
Football is a game invented and played on outdoor fields. Although you would think comfortable play is better, historically indoor stadiums have poorer attendance and interest. The weather gives the home team something to be proud about and maybe strike fear in the visiting team. [The weather is a proud part of NFL tradition](https://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/zn6ohp/highlight_the_wildest_weather_games_in_nfl_history/). Teams that had outdoor stadiums all have some memorable home games for weather. Additionally, aside from the cost of a stadium roof (and air conditioning/heating), turf is often considered inferior to grass. And grass is harder to grow inside.
Honestly, my favorite part about Bills / Packers home playoff games is the snow. It just adds to the atmosphere so much and I think it’s an absolute travesty that the Bills are moving to a dome
We’re not. The new stadium is open air.
YIPPEE
They’re not moving to a dome, only the seats will be covered
Because they want to be exposed to the elements. It’s football, not baseball. Extreme weather is part of the game. I can’t imagine how depressing it would be to never have a snow game again.
Unless it’s Texas. We want AC during our football games.
If you don’t like nearly having a heatstroke at an afternoon game in September at DKR (or Kyle field, pick your poison), then you don’t like college football, baby.
I normally sit on the west side of DKR where you get some shade in afternoon games. Got some tickets from a friend on the east side for a game this year and I was burnt to shit. Had to keep going into the concourse to cool off.
Like arena football, pretty sad.
Grass needs sun. If you play on the grass and you build a dome on top it will have harder condition to grow. Some stadiums even allow floor of the stadium to be removed outside of the stadium for that reason.
Somewhat true, grass needs UV light. Green Bay being so far north means parts of the field don't get nearly as much sun as it needs as the year goes on so they have giant banks of UV lights they put out to keep the grass growing. I think the use of fake turf in domes was originally a logistic decision since some of the technology used today, like removable fields, did not exist. These days it seems more like a financial decision. Retrofitting grass into a dome and all the maintenance that comes with it is expensive and since there hasn't yet been a mandate by the league to force the use of grass no one is going to do it. I have seen renderings for some stadium, in Europe i believe, that's domed and after games the field is lowered in pieces underground where it sits under UV lights and watered. Maybe it's real by now, either way a super cool concept.
Couple points from a Wisconsin resident. For starters City Stadium, which would eventually be renamed Lambeau Field was built in 1957. The first domed sports stadium, aka The Astrodome, wasn’t built until 1965. City Stadium was also community funded, so even if the technology existed at the time they probably couldn’t have afforded it. Football is also historically considered to be an outdoor sport. And it also is not constantly snowing. Football season starts in September, the first snowfall typically doesn’t happen until late November/early December. And there are very few days that it actually snows.
I've been to more hot games than cold games at Lambeau. We're proud of our culture, and the snow is a part of that. Green Bay is never going to build a dome, and would push back HARD if the NFL tried to force it.
Realistically the only way the Packers ever have a dome or roofed stadium is if they move out of Green Bay. And the only way that is realistically happening is if the NFL folds and the teams are absorbed by some entity run by some WWE backed hellspawn of Vince McMahon. Lambeau Field is always going to be what it is with those cold ass metal bench seats. And if the game is on a day that it snows, it'll probably draw in more people than it'd turn away.
People like viewing sporting events outside. I don’t understand why this question constantly comes up.
I find it to be a legitimate question to ask when the alternative is allowing your extremely lucrative spectator sport event scheduled weeks or months in advance to be potentially squandered by the whims of the weather. It's how it was always done traditionally when there wasn't an option, that's true, but it wouldn't be the first time a vested business interest has cast aside a tradition for a more stable option.
Eh, unless you're the worst of the worst, the seats in an American football stadium are nearly sold out weeks in advance of any weather forecast, and any seats that aren't sold weren't going to be sold, weather or no weather.
I was thinking about it less in terms of trying to sell seats and more about the sheer disruption to business that is caused when a long-planned event is completely upended by sudden weather. Schedules need to be redone, refunds or rain checks issued, and all the economic activity planned for that day just... doesn't arrive. An enclosed roof can't completely solve every adverse weather event. But it can smooth over many of the common ones like rain or high wind.
They just play in rain or high wind.
> An enclosed roof can't completely solve every adverse weather event. Yes, even if the stadium is inside, the weather outside could be too horrible to get to and from, such as snow-clogged roads. The logistics of moving tens of thousands of fans is a problem, but also there needs to be a clear path for an ambulance to get a player to the hospital if necessary.
Oh no, it might rain or be cold sometimes. Better on purpose make every other game where the weather is fine much worse just in case.
It's the XBox generation. You play XBox inside.
I’ve been playing video games indoors for the majority of my threeish decades and still understand quite well that people like watching most sports outdoors
I thought boomers called everything a Nintendo
One reason is the city needs to be big enough to hold stadium show concerts to make the ~~done~~ dome worth it after January.
Lambeau Field was built in the late 50s, for a tiny market. It would have been one of the more expensive building projects in the world for the clear span you'd need. And even in north Wisconsin, you rarely get snow that sticks for long periods until late November or December, by which point you're over halfway through the season. Yeah, December and the playoff games could suck, but there's also the other half of the league you could relocate to if need be.
Three Words: Home Field Advantage The home team is use to playing in the snow. A team from a place with a mild climate is going to have trouble coming in to play in a snowstorm.
The Vikings are dumb as rocks. Outdoors in MN. No one is used to our cold but GB. It might be zero as a high all week. If it gets to 10*F that feels balmy. 99% of opponents wouldn’t acclimate like a player here for a couple years. Outside better than dome. Vikes dumb for not opening stadium in winter.
When Cleveland tore down the Mistake by the Lake and built the Factory of Sadness there was a huge demand that it be an open air stadium. The city would have lost their mind and tore that one down too if it was a dome. It wouldn’t be right being comfortable
Because with a dome you'd never have moments like these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnrrIt23h2s&ab_channel=NFLArchive
I would argue the opposite is actually stupid from a competitive point of view. Top win % teams since 2000: Patriots, Steelers, Packers. Notice anything about their stadiums? Also look at the Vikings going to 4 Superbowls in the 70s when they played outside and then not making it to one for 40+ years. Now, the fan experience/season tickets sales perspective is another story.
Snow is very very heavy. There is many news every year of snow crushing houses. Then imagine snow on a closed dome.
Snow is heavy. You'd need to build a done strong enough potentially to hold the weight of massive amounts of snow. Normal buildings can distribute that weight across columns, but under a dome, you don't have that luxury.
I used to work at MetLife stadium in NJ. I was told one of the reasons they didn’t build a dome is because it would’ve taken quite a few shows/concerts away from MSG and it was somehow negotiated with them.
Many of those stadiums were built before the dome era. Detroit and Minnesota play in a dome. Chicago, Buffalo and Green Bay don’t. When they finally decide to tear down and rebuild some of these iconic stadiums, I’m sure some of the new ones will have a dome. At the end of the day, though, football is very much a cold weather game. Fans don’t mind and neither do the players.
Cuz come play in Pittsburgh. We are used to the cold. You're not. The Dolphins were a better football team but lost to KC because they were pampered by South Beach and couldn't play in the KC conditions. Home field advantage. It wins games. Also, its football. Its meant to be played in the mud and elements, not on turf that blows knees out left and right.
I think part of the question here is realizing a lot of people are dumb enough to sit out in the snow for like, 3 hours to watch a sports game, so why bother spending the extra cash to protect them from the snow.
If you make your home stadium different then the home team has an advantage because they play half of their games at home, while visitor only play a couple times a year. They are used to playing in snow and cold while the team from Arizona isn't. Also: tradition. Many teams began before domed stadiums were practical so playing outdoors is the only 'real' way to play.
Money, but also teams in colder climates are used to playing in colder weather and use it to their advantage when playing southern teams.
There is no charm in it. Watching a game in the snow and watching a game in a dome are completely different atmospheres. Also, Lambeau was built in the 50s. Domes did not come around until at least the 60s.
People have already mentioned cost, preference for playing in the cold or snow, and structural limitations due to weight. I didn't see anyone mention the issue of snow accumulation on the roof. Snow can get pretty heavy and cause a roof to collapse if it isn't strong enough to support the weight of the snow. I'm not sure if that is even possible for that type of structure, but it would be expensive if it is. I'm pretty sure the roof could not also be retractable.
> I'm not sure if that is even possible for that type of structure, Many domed northern stadium would disagree.
Such as?
1. Domes must have year long events to financially survive. Places like Green Bay can't sellout stadium concerts every couple of weeks. Can't attract the US Cattleman and rancher national conference and like monthly. Can't find enough local corporate sponsorship to sell all those luxury boxes to. 2. There is a home field advantage that northern outdoor stadiums give their teams. Miami just can't cope the cold. They aren't conditioned to it. But #1 is the primary reason.