STARKVILLE — Brent Frey’s job is never easy.
But as Mississippi State’s associate athletic director for event management, Frey found himself in charge of game operations last Saturday night for MSU’s season opener against Southern Mississippi — an event that featured 61,889 fans, the largest crowd in MSU history.
Torrential rains that persisted for much of the afternoon didn’t help, but Frey and his staff got through the opener. He talked with The Dispatch about the challenges brought forth by MSU’s $75 million expansion to Davis Wade Stadium.
Dispatch: Last Saturday night, the university hosted the largest crowd in Davis Wade Stadium history. What kind of challenges did that present?
Frey: The unknowns. The unknowns of how people were going to enter the stadium, how stadium traffic was going to flow and operate, the staffing of the stadium, how the students were going to react to a knew place. … There were a number of questions going into the first game in an expanded stadium.
Dispatch: Now that it’s over, how would you grade the first night?
Frey: An A. I’d say it went very well. It went like we thought it would for the most part. There’s always an element of the unknown for the first game of any season, but I thought everything was handled relatively well.
Dispatch: What kind of challenges arose?
Frey: Any time you have new construction, you’re going to have some problems you just couldn’t anticipate. With the amount of rain we had, we had a few of those. We had some water leaks here and there, we had some ramps heading to the upper decks that were repainted and the excess water made them slick. We had some complaints of people falling and those problems have been taken care of. We had some traffic problems, which you always know you’re going to have.
Dispatch: Sounds like the weather played a bigger role Saturday night than the presence of the new expansion.
Frey: If you could have anything stacked against you for the first game, we had it. With the weather and the new addition to the stadium, the sold-out crowd, the fact that we were playing an in-state rival that we hadn’t played in 24 years, anything that could go wrong in that first game seemed like it was going to go wrong. With all those issues, all in all, I think we did a very good job.
Dispatch: What kind of changes will you make from Game 1 to Game 2?
Frey: We learned we’ll have to shift some personnel. We had some gates that saw much more traffic than others. We’ll move workers to those gates. We found out students already are flowing differently from one gate to another, so we’ll shift student gates a little. We’ll have to beef up security in some places inside and outside the stadium.
Dispatch: You’ve been here 20 years. Compare the stadium and your job from 20 years ago to now.
Frey: It’s night and day. I got here 20 years ago and we had two sides. We had the upper deck on the west side and all we had was the lower bowl on the east. The difference then was that you were almost dealing with two different stadiums. You had a stadium on the east side that you had to contend with, and you had one on the west side. The flow back and forth was not like any other stadium. Now it flows from one side to the other much more than it used to.
Dispatch: Is your job easier when the Bulldogs are winning?
Frey: Everybody’s job is easier. A lot of problems go unnoticed when you win. A lot of complaints seem to get swept away.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brandon Walker on Twitter @BWonStateBeat
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