To the editor:

Before we wrap up another successful football season under Coach Mangino, let’s ask Lew Perkins what he is doing to create a first-class football facility.

I noted in the program for this year’s KU vs. OU game that the first addition to Oklahoma’s Memorial Stadium occurred in 1949 with “a six-foot lowering of the old playing surface and the elimination of a running track that surrounded the playing area. The change produced 7,000 new ringside seats.”

In Ivan Maisels’ new book, subtitled “College Football’s Most Overrated & Underrated,” the author rates Darrell K. Royal — Texas Memorial Stadium as the second “most overrated” college football stadium: “What saved this stadium from being the most overrated in the nation is the renovation, completed in 1999, that removed the track that separated the fans from the field. The atmosphere … used to be so dead that scientists came to study how people survived in it.”

KU is one of only three BCS schools with a track inside its football stadium, a designation we need not share with Duke and Washington!

Here’s the game plan for Lew: 1) Tear out the track. 2) Lower the field and add seven rows of seats (per the engineering study in Lew’s file). 3) Knock down the horseshoe and rebuild stands across the back of the north end zone.

Rock Chalk, KU football!

J. David Holt,
Kansas City, Mo.