Stadium seats on the market have evolved to become too deep and wide for the narrow, 17-inch-wide space allotted to each fan at Memorial Stadium.
Because the new seats have a concave rather than flat back, they should offer more room for folks behind them.
WORLD-HERALD EXCLUSIVE
LINCOLN — Nebraska prison inmates are making sure Cornhusker football fans will be sitting pretty this fall. Taking a pretty seat, however, will cost more.
About 50 inmates employed by state prison industries are busily stitching, screen-printing and assembling 18,000 new stadium seats for rental at NU games.
The bright red, plastic-backed, thicker-padded chairs will replace khaki-colored, canvas chairs whose 40-year-old design could best be described as industrial and, well, yucky.
“I think they wanted to class the stadium up a little bit,” said John McGovern, general manager of Cornhusker State Industries.
“They'll be sitting in the lap of luxury,” said Chris Johnson, a 35-year-old Omaha prison inmate working on the contract.
The new seats will cost $5 to rent on game days, a $1 increase, although season ticket holders were given a chance to rent an entire season's worth of them for $4 per game.
NU and Cornhusker Industries have been on the same team for quite a while.
Prison industries developed the old, khaki stadium seat years ago, probably in the 1970s or earlier, Stephens said, and have been repairing them for years.
Inmates have also built custom-designed wooden decks for whirlpools and “taping stations” that trainers use when taping ankles of athletes. The huge red pads that cover concrete abutments that line the football field at Memorial Stadium were also convict-constructed.
Overall, about 550 inmates work for Cornhusker Industries, making license plates, office furniture, inmate clothing and beds. They also produce Braille documents and wash 7 million pounds of laundry a year for area hospitals, veterans homes and jails.
A few inmates work for private companies within the prison and are paid prevailing wages. But inmates working for prison industries earn 34 cents to $1.08 per hour, with the chance of getting quarterly bonuses of up to $525 for good conduct, attendance at work and productivity.
The goal is job training, McGovern said — 85 percent of the prison workers have never held a job.
The $693,000 seat contract with NU is the single largest order ever for prison industries and will provide the equivalent of five full-time jobs for a year.
A discussion last year between Janell Hall, NU's director of concessions, and Shawn Martindale, a salesman for Cornhusker, sparked the question: Is there a better chair out there? Several mock-ups later, they settled on a stadium seat that's been produced for the Green Bay Packers.
The seat has been modified slightly so it fits on the narrow planks that serve as the grandstands in Memorial Stadium. And the padded seats were reduced to 16½ inches in width so they wouldn't overlap into the neighboring seats.
The pads on the new seats are 2 inches thick, a comfy half-inch thicker than the industrial-grade old ones, said Steve Neff, an administrative assistant at Cornhusker.
The order of 18,000 seats is about 4,000 more than have been available in the past, Stephens said, because increased rentals are expected.
With their Big Red plastic backs, the new rental seats should look sharper on television.
McGovern said he'll be watching.
“I'll be honest, every time I see a Nebraska football game, my eyes go to the pads we made,” he said. “Now they'll go to the seats.”
Contact the writer: 402-473-9584, paul.hammel@owh.com
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