Facility Notes

In Charlotte, David Scott reports the ACC football championship game at Bank of America Stadium has sold out “for a second consecutive year.” The ACC yesterday announced that its Dec. 3 title game “had sold out once again to the general public,”  and the only tickets remaining “are the 10,000 allotted each competing school.” This marks the “third time in the game's seven-year history it's been sold out.” The ACC in ’10 “awarded the game to Charlotte for two years.” Two sellouts later, the league “again will make a decision on the game's future.” But a league source said that “it's not going to come until December, at the earliest.” ACC Commissioner John Swofford has said previously that “he hopes Charlotte can continue to host the championship game if this year's game matches the success of last year's between Florida State and Virginia Tech.” Scott writes making the sellout for this year's game “more impressive is the fact that neither competing team has been determined yet” (CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, 11/10).

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD: Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton yesterday said that he “intends to regroup with sponsors of the Vikings football stadium bill next week for a fresh push, but said he's frustrated by ‘all the duplicity’ he sees on a project that he said is less about football than about needed economic development.” In Minneapolis, Rachel Stassen-Berger writes Dayton “must reconcile his differences with a Legislature that appears to have little appetite for an immediate decision.” Dayton said, "If they don't want to deal with it, then say it." He added that a “special session is needed.” Dayton: "I want to isolate the stadium because if this goes into the regular session ... the leveraging everyone will try to pull with their votes ... it's going to get very messy and very ugly” (Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE, 11/10).

GRASS IS GREENER? A Nationals spokesperson said the team is in the process of "a complete renovation of the field" at Nationals Park. The process "began late last month and is expected to be finished by Thanksgiving.” In DC, Dan Steinberg reported Nationals Park’s original Kentucky Blue Grass turf was “removed for the first time since the stadium opened.” The warning track dirt “will also be replaced and will be a slightly darker shade in 2012” (WASHINGTONPOST.com, 11/9).