New Arms Race
College Athletic Departments Try To Keep Up
By Steve Sampsell

Some fans might reminisce about the character and charm of aging college athletic venues, but true accolades for those facilities are the exception rather than the rule these days.

Instead, a high-stakes culture of corporate leapfrog and peer pressure among colleges and universities sometimes blurs the line between needs and wants. As a result, older rarely means better for athletic facilities and that culture-combined with a desire for additional revenue streams-spurs the ongoing "arms race" for ever-grander facilities in college athletics.

Administrators at Pitt, Penn State and West Virginia have immersed themselves in that culture in recent years.

"There's a building boom out of necessity," says Penn State athletic director Tim Curley. His school has built a baseball stadium, expanded its wrestling facility and started work on practice facilities for men's and women's soccer in the past three years. It has plans for a $9 million softball stadium on campus in the next couple of years. "So many buildings were built after World War II that it's just time for them to be replaced or upgraded. What's happening in athletics is happening in academic units as well, because we're all facing the same challenges."

Still, changes in athletic facilities always generate more interest because chemistry or classroom buildings never attract 100,000 people on a Saturday afternoon or 12,000 people on a snowy winter night in January.

Plus, alterations to athletic facilities elicit serious emotional responses. Perhaps nobody knows that better than Pitt athletic director Steve Pederson, who guided the program's move from Pitt Stadium in 1999 and paved the way for the arrival of the Petersen Events Center in 2002. Now, with the Panthers playing football at Heinz Field and "the Pete" regarded as one of the best on-campus basketball facilities in the country, Pitt seems to have its facilities in order for years to come. But that's not entirely true.

"We've done good things with Fitzgerald Field House for volleyball, wrestling and gymnastics, and we've upgraded our swimming facility, but we have baseball and softball to address," Pederson says. "We're just trying to do what's in the best interest of our student-athletes and, at the same time, provide venues that people want to visit."

While places like Franklin Field in Philadelphia (built in 1895) and Fordham University's Rose Hill Gym (in use since 1925 and the oldest major college basketball gym in the nation) remain in use, they have undergone renovations and upgrades to remain viable.

None of the major facilities at Pitt, Penn State or WVU are nearly that old, but they get regular facelifts anyway. That includes everything from installing club seats and upgrading locker rooms at the WVU Coliseum (2004) to replacing the overused turf at Heinz Field (2007) and Mountaineer Field (2007).

Notable nips and tucks are not limited to public spaces, either. Penn State spent thousands of dollars for what Curley calls "wow factor" items in the bowels and hallways of the Bryce Jordan Center. Those were mostly photographic murals and signage that would be seen by members of the athletic department, basketball teams and recruits.

As part of the building boom, most schools have made similar changes in areas that can be seen by fans, too.

"There's much more attention paid to the customers' experience in our facilities," Curley says. "We've had to compete against professional facilities that have high-end amenity seating. You see more of that wow factor-graphics packages, pictures, plasma screens and high finishes on furnishings."

That part of the approach and building boom has little to do with student-athletes. It's about donors, fans, patrons, spectators-pick your word-as long as it's a word that, from the school's perspective, eventually results in more income.

"A large part of what happens with facilities happens because schools want to take care of the people who can come up with the money," says David Wright, a senior editor for August Publications, which produces Arena Digest and similar industry insider publications and Web sites. "In terms of building new or renovating, the major consideration for older places is whether or not club seats or suites can be added to an existing structure.

"If it's not possible, or if, in the case of basketball, they cannot find a way to do some fancy sideline seating, then they're probably building something rather than renovating."

By that standard, all three major schools in the region seem set to satisfy both fans and fundraising needs because Beaver Stadium, Heinz Field and Mountaineer Field, just like the WVU Coliseum, the Jordan Center and the Pete, all cater to high-end fans with special seating areas and suites. In fact, the Pete remains unique nationwide with its courtside suites. Nobody really expects athletic facilities to enjoy long lives anymore, though - especially if they cannot be changed or upgraded.

"There's no doubt the life of those facilities has been very drastically reduced," Curley says. "A good example of that is Three Rivers Stadium. In the old days, you could get 50 to 75 years out of a stadium like that."

When Three Rivers Stadium was demolished on Feb. 11, 2001, it was five months shy of its 31st birthday.

At Penn State, Beaver Stadium has been renovated seven times since it moved to its current location in 1960. Likewise, Mountaineer Field has experienced regular upgrades and the arrival of Bob Huggins as the Mountaineers' basketball coach has spurred more interest and another set of upgrades to the Coliseum this year.

It's a competition spurred by never-ending comparisons. Almost without fail, coaches and competitors who return from road trips and see facilities they consider better than their own make a beeline to let their bosses know about the perceived disparity.

A bigger practice gym? We should have one. A more spacious locker room? We need one of those as well. That state-of-the-art video scoreboard? We need that to compete for recruits. "Oh, you hear it all the time," Pederson says. "And when you're traveling, you do look around. But it's just not always possible to keep keeping up with people."

While everyone seems to be trying to keep up with each other, they do seem to agree about some rules, or at least outcomes of the ongoing competition.

"Smaller seems to be the thing everyone wants," Wright says. "That's more intimate arenas and even smaller stadiums. They'll sacrifice a few more seats to get in a more suites or club seating. They'd rather do a 45,000-seat stadium on campus with suites than 65,000 without."

To be clear, though, nobody wants to be "without." That's why they keep building, and keep pressuring other schools to try and out-build them before they respond by doing the same.

"It's just something that's probably not going to end," Wright says. "It's all part of the competition."