Somewhat lost in all the uproar and controversy surrounding the move of the Bears/Vikings game next Monday night to the University of Minnesota’s TCF Bank Stadium is the fact that the college stadium seats about 13,000 fewer than the Metrodome, which has been sold out for this game for quite some time.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports this afternoon that university officials are confident they can get the stadium ready:
“I would say there will be a game here Monday night,” said Scott Ellision, the university’s associate athletic director.
Ellison said “the NFL is on board” with the condition of the field, which is still frozen and blanketed by snow.
The same article says that the Vikings and the university are “in talks” to add temporary seating to the west end zone of the stadium. It doesn’t seem possible that they could add enough seats to accomodate all the ticketholders for the game, but the Vikings already refunded ticketholders (or credited “season ticket owners”, as they termed them, for 2011) for the game moved to Detroit this past week.
But what if they can’t get enough seats to accomodate everyone? Who decides who gets left out? That’s a mess the Vikings will have to figure out. All we know for sure right now is that the Bears and Vikings will kick off at 7:30 p.m. CST on Monday — somewhere.