Columnist Susan Snyder: Mandalay comparisons far afield

Friday, Jan. 10, 2003 | 4:19 a.m.

Over and over, those extolling the virtues of the new Mandalay Bay Convention Center ballroom bragged it would hold a football field.

Actually, at 100,000 square feet, the ballroom would hold two football fields.

Why do we compare everything to a football field? Society seems able to visualize only one spatial area, and that area is a football field. Even those who do not understand the game of football are expected to imagine its field.

To what did people compare stuff before football? My cronies, who also have nothing better to do than ruminate over tripe, said it probably was an acre.

Most of us living A.F. (after football) can't visualize an acre unless we're paying someone to mow it, pave it or build a big boxy stucco house on it.

But not long ago an acre meant something. After all, the part of the country we live in was settled largely by people who came out for 160 acres of Homestead Act land.

To what did people compare stuff before acres?

"Hey Ergh. Your mama give shadow big as mastodon carcass."

Hmmm. Sounds a lot like football.

For things bigger than a football field, such as the area that would be covered by the fallout from a North Korean nuclear bomb we aren't worried about, we use the state of Rhode Island.

Many of us have never been to the state of Rhode Island. Half our public school students probably couldn't point to it on a map (but they'd know where to spot Middle Earth). Yet, we are expected to visualize the size of Rhode Island.

What no one has ever done, to my limited knowledge, is compare a football field to the state of Rhode Island.

How many football fields would fit inside the state of Rhode Island?

Well, let's figure it out. This could be fun -- I am to mathematics what Dubya is to the English language. Here goes:

According to its official website, Rhode Island encompasses 1,214 square miles.

One square mile has 27,878,400 square feet. Multiply that by 1,214 and you get 33,844,377,600, or the number of square feet in the state of Rhode Island.

Stay with me.

A football field is 300 feet long and 150 feet wide, or 45,000 square feet.

Divide 33,844,377,600 (calculator is sweating) by 45,000 and you get 752,097.28 -- the number of football fields that would fit inside Rhode Island.

And how much of Rhode Island would fit into Mandalay Bay Convention Center's ballroom? Let's see, divide 100,000 by 33,844,377,600, and ... forget it. A copy editor just imploded.

Now, Mandalay Bay sits on 60 acres, or 2,613,600 square feet. So we could build 12,949 Mandalay Bay resorts in Rhode Island with 871,200 square feet left over (room for 19.3 football fields).

But we should focus on how many Rhode Islanders fit inside Mandalay Bay resort's 3,700 rooms.

U.S. Census figures show Rhode Island has 1,048,319 residents. Divide by 3,700, and it would take about 283 one-night stays to circulate the entire population through Mandalay Bay -- 141 nights, double occupancy.

And 5,400 of them could sleep end-to-end in average size sleeping bags on the ballroom floor. Enough to cover two football fields.