Oklahoma Sooners Football: Oklahoma Memorial Stadium adding enhanced wireless access, wider seats

According to a release, the University of Oklahoma is in the process of enhancing wireless access and widening the seats at Gaylord Family - Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Additionally, OU will be widening the aisles and adding handrails, with the latter being another part of the school’s effort to facilitate ADA patrons. The enhancements are scheduled to be completed by the beginning of the 2019 season.

Unfortunately, the changes will result in a decreased stadium capacity of approximately 3,000. According to Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione, OU has been preparing for this situation for quite some time and has been working with affected season ticket holders in an effort to find new locations for them.

A decrease in capacity is never particularly great news for fans, but this seems like a decent trade-off considering how narrow some of the seats happened to be, as well as how congested the aisles could get at times. After the improvements, the narrower seats will meet the code width of 18 inches.

According to the release, wireless access will be expanded substantially.

“OU is working closely with AT&T in making the wireless addition. Currently, only the south end zone seats have specific wireless access. The system that is being installed will be the latest version in Wi-Fi technology, Wi-Fi 6, which will have a significantly higher capacity than its most recent predecessor. It is designed specifically to provide greater access in congested environments. There will be 750 access points added to the 245 that already exist in the south end zone.”

For those of you who like to check scores or Twitter whilst the Oklahoma Sooners and their opponent are off the field, this is obviously a game-changer. This is especially good news for me, as it was previously impossible for me to upload GIFs from our Twitter account.