Texas school installs $750,000 Jumbotron, largest in prep sports
The latest shot across the bow in the Texas stadium arms race has been fired by a mid-sized program near the Louisiana border, and it is an absolute doozy: A scoreboard Jumbotron the size of a house.
As reported by the Longview News Journal and a handful of other sources, the Carthage (Texas) High football program is nearing completion on the installation of what it insists is the largest stadium screen in the world of high school sports. The Carthage Jumbotron measures 26-feet high and 44-feet wide and features a screen that takes up a total of 1,200-square feet. All in all, the Jumbotron's construction and installation will cost approximately $750,000, making it the instant signature item at 6,500 capacity Bulldog Stadium.
You can see the screen as it is intended to look in the conceptual image above.
"It is the best [stadium screen] we have installed; it is the Cadillac for sure," David Paslay, director of engineering with Nevco, the company responsible for the Carthage Jumbotron, told the News Journal.
For $750,000, the Carthage screen better be the Cadillac of the sector. As one might expect, the amount of money that the Carthage Independent School District spent on the screen has come under fire, with critics pointing out all the other, more academic ways the funds could have been spent in the district.
Yet, for a program that has captured three state titles in the past four seasons, many are more excited for the board's operational debut in a Friday scrimmage than they are worried about its expense, as a pair of Carthage residents made clear to the News Journal.
"I think it is awesome to have one," said Carthage High School student Mia Scott.
"They've earned it; that's for sure," said Gabriel Jimenez, manager of Hibbitt Sports in Carthage.
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