Talks of a new facility that could replace the Carrier Dome have increased in recent days, but Syracuse Univ. AD Daryl Gross said building a new home for the school's football and basketball teams "isn't a 'right now' thing for us at all." Gross yesterday appeared on ESPN Radio 97.7 Syracuse to talk about the recent developments and said, "For years, I've been talking about how we can enhance, or do we need to look forward to a stadium in the future. At some point, you're going to need something new and at some point, if it's not now, you're going to need to enhance. We've done a lot of enhancements since I've been here to the Dome. And now we're talking about taking it up another level, or if a new stadium were to ever be on the table, where it was feasible for us and the community." He continued, "It's not like we just started talking about it the last couple of months. This has been ongoing for years. It's just that now it's at a point where it's being talked about in a lot of circles publicly, and that's good. It makes for good discussion. These types of things go beyond athletics. Obviously, these things have implications for a community." Gross said it has been a "dream of ours for a long time to, if need be, to move into a new stadium, and we're just preparing for it." One idea that has been discussed is building a new facility that features a retractable roof, and Gross said, "When the sun comes out, people want to be outside. I don’t know that they want to be under a roof. So maybe retractable makes more sense than it does in most places, just so people can enjoy and feel like they're outside." He noted the Carrier Dome, which opened in '80, is an "old building, but we've made the best of it and we love it." Gross: "If the Dome is the way we're going to go, then we're going to make sure that it gets better" ("Upon Further Review," ESPN Radio 97.7 Syracuse, 1/15).
