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"Godzillatron" goes live at Texas' Royal-Memorial Stadium


We've seen Varsity Blues and Friday Night Lights enough times to know that bragging rights are an important part of Texas football culture, so it's no surprise that the UT Longhorns are filled with pride over their ginormous new stadium display, nicknamed Godzillatron. At 134 feet wide by 55 feet tall, the $8 million dollar screen needed to be mounted to tree trunk-like support columns with 5-inch diameter grounding bolts, and requires 40 five-ton air conditioners to keep it cool in the sometimes unrelenting Texas heat. Problems start to arise, though, if and when school officials refer to Godzillatron as the world's largest HD display -- not only is that plain false (the Tokyo Racecourse's new Mitsubishi monster trumps it in both square footage and diagonal length), but as we noted before, it may not even be the largest display on American soil. You see, although the Longhorns' screen can boast a total area of 7,370 square feet, the other Daktronics-built display at Dolphin Stadium still has it beat on the diagonal measurement: 1,750 inches to Godzillatron's 1,738. However, as a wise man once said, "Being perfect is not about that scoreboard out there. It's not about winning. It's about you and your relationship with yourself, your family, and your friends." That may be true, but if the Longhorns don't bring home another championship trophy this season, the alumni who shelled out millions of bucks for that scoreboard are gonna be pretty darn pissed.

Longhorns to snatch "world's biggest HD display" title from Dolphins?


It's been a bad year for the Miami Dolphins: first they lost Heisman Trophy-winning running back Ricky Williams for the upcoming season, and soon their "biggest HD display in the world" may have to play second fiddle to a new scoreboard being installed this summer for the University of Texas Longhorns. At 7,370 square feet, the 134-foot by 55-foot 'board being built for the school by Daktronics (who also manufactured the Miami display) has a slightly larger screen area than the current 7000-sqaure-foot title-holder, but nitpickers may argue that since the UT model will be almost a foot shorter diagonally, that it doesn't qualify as the "world's biggest." The argument may turn out to be moot, though, as a horse track in Tokyo is supposedly planning to install a ridiculous 197-foot-wide monster of a screen later this year that will overshadow all who came before it. UT's project comes as part of a multi-million dollar overhaul of their stadium, which will also include several other large displays, a new sound system, and a $150 million renovation of the north end zone meant to enable a 90,000 person capacity.

[Thanks, Brian]



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