COPPELL, Texas — By an unusual coincidence in my work for Verizon, I am in the Dallas area this week and took the opportunity to do a walk-through of the stadium in the bidding against Salem Stadium for future Stagg Bowls. (Not for 2007, which is in Salem.)

Shockingly, like a typical Texas high school football stadium, Buddy Echols Stadium Google map is big. It is listed at 12,000 capacity, though I actually thought it seated more.

They are in the midst of installing artificial turf — the grass was all out and the playing surface was stripped down to dirt. There’s certainly plenty of parking. It’s less than 10 miles from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

Those are the positives. The negatives are that the D-III crowd will get swallowed up in a stadium that size, unless an ASC team makes the Stagg Bowl every year. How many Mount Union fans are making the 19-hour drive to Coppell? (Or, how many are paying through the nose for plane tickets on short notice?) Even if they draw 8,000 fans, how many empty seats does that leave? Who in the local market cares one bit about the Division III championship game while the Texas high school football playoffs are going on? Would the game generate even a blip on the local news radar, as opposed to the minutes upon minutes of coverage it receives in Salem? And who will pick up the mantle from Stone Station, which has been the Division III welcome wagon (photos) in Salem the past couple of seasons? Will those fans make the 1,200-mile drive? Will the Division III community come out in force the way it has the past couple of seasons?

The scoreboard is sufficient, though not as new as Salem’s, and the press box accommodations don’t appear to fulfill the need I have seen at recent Stagg Bowls. There’s a box on one side that seats 15-18 people across, six partitioned booths on the other side of the stadium, but not a space similar to Salem for television to build out of.

But these concerns are secondary to the location and the size. I just don’t think the Stagg Bowl works here. But I’m glad I got to see it to make sure.