Take me out to the ... show

New scoreboard and video board debut at Lupton this season.

By: Mark Wright

Ross Bailey has seen a progression over the years in the way fans take in a baseball game.

Lupton Stadium now features a 36-foot by 10 foot digital scoreboard and 21-foot by 11-foot video screen. Says Coach Jim Schlossnagle, “I can promise you that it won’t only be just as good as there is in college baseball; it’s going to be as good as there is in all of college athletics.”

“It used to be enough to throw out a ball and bat and play a game and fans would enjoy baseball for the game’s sake,” said Bailey, the associate director of athletics. “Now it’s become what we call the game experience.”

A new digital scoreboard is enhancing that experience at Lupton Stadium. The striking display features a 36-foot by 10-foot scoreboard, a 21-foot by 11-foot digital video monitor and a 4-foot by 57-foot ribbon board along the bottom that shows players’ statistics. Instead of permanent ads, the scoreboard features digital ones that can be rotated from one game to the next or season to season.

Other features include a decorative iron structure on top highlighted by a Horned Frog logo, while a column on the right side of the board tracks the speed of each pitch.
Baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle, for one, is sufficiently impressed.

“I can promise you that it won’t only be just as good as there is in college baseball; it’s going to be as good as there is in all of college athletics,” Schlossnagle said.

Colorado Display Systems installed the scoreboard, funded by private donations, this spring. In the 2004 and 2005 seasons, the first two at the new stadium, the scoreboard from the old TCU Diamond was used.

Bailey said the plan all along was to upgrade to a new scoreboard as soon as funds became available. He believes the timing couldn’t have worked out better.

Had a new scoreboard accompanied the stadium’s opening two years ago, Bailey said, it might well have used some elements of the traditional analog technology, which the digital age is fast making obsolete.

“It’s almost like going from old tube TVs to the new flat screens,” Bailey said.
It should make for quite an experience. — MW