Apparently the athletic department at the University of Michigan felt that their football stadium capacity of about 107,000 wasn’t big enough. So they have decided to add roughly 2,000 more seats to the Michigan football stadium known as “The Big House”. Official capacity for the newly renovated Wolverine football stadium is now 109,901. Michigan fans can take satisfaction in the fact that with these additional seats, The Big House is now once again the largest stadium in all of college football. Penn State’s Beaver Stadium was previously the largest venue before these seats were added to Michigan’s football stadium.

The addition of 2,000 seats was far from the only change made as part of the stadium’s $226 million renovation project. Luxury boxes and club seats were also added to the stadium. Don’t expect the changes and renovations for the iconic Big House to stop there though. Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon says he has plans of expanding the stadium even more.

"We're already looking at future expansion," Brandon said.

The school cited financial benefits as the reasons for building the luxury boxes and club seating along the sidelines of the stadium. The irony of the situation is that Michigan still has some selling and marketing to do of its new features if the school hopes to receive the profits that they originally had in mind. Right now 25% of the luxury boxes and almost 80% of the 2,952 club seats have yet to be sold for next season. That is why Michigan is letting fans tour the luxury boxes and sit in the newly erected club seats. University officials are hoping that letting fans tour the new areas of the stadium will generate buzz, excitement, and ultimately get the unsold luxury boxes and club seats occupied. The Wolverine’s first football game is on September 4th at home against the University of Connecticut.

I know that Michigan has a very loyal and tenured fan base but this seems like a strange time to be asking Wolverine football fans to spend large amounts of money on the football program. Michigan has gone 8-16 the last two seasons under Head Coach Rich Rodriguez and has lost six straight games to rival Ohio State. There is also talk of a head coaching change if Rodriguez doesn’t produce this season. Maybe athletic director Dave Brandon knows something I don’t, but it seems like a curious time to ask people to pay large amounts of money to watch a product that lately hasn’t been up to par. It will be interesting to see if the majority of these new luxury boxes and clubs seats are occupied or empty on September 4th.