SBJ College: Building Construction Majors

On my last weekend before college football starts, I painted the bonus room, trashed the 10-year-old elliptical and got the oil changed in my wife’s car. Honey-do list complete. Bring on the season.

Here’s what is cooking on campus:

COLLEGE FOOTBALL FACILITY SPENDING STAYS STRONG

• For the eighth year in a row, spending on college football facilities will top $700 million, with USC's $315 million renovation of L.A. Coliseum leading the way. There’s not exactly an abundance of new buildings -- Old Dominion’s stadium reconstruction came in at $67.5 million; Missouri’s new south end zone seating cost $98 million. In all, 2019 spending on college football facilities will come in just north of $734 million, which includes new training centers or operations buildings at Illinois, Florida and South Carolina.
  
  
• While the building boom in college football is alive and well, spending is projected to slow down in 2020, according to SBJ Research Director David Broughton. He has cumulative spending pegged at $482 million next year. That's not because schools are cutting back, but because there simply aren’t many of the big-ticket items scheduled to open. In 2017, for example, three college football-related construction projects topped the $200 million mark. In 2018, Northwestern was the only one to hit that mark at $270 million, and USC’s $315 million stands alone this year.
  
  
• In 2020, it appears that TCU’s behind-schedule Amon G. Carter Stadium renovation will be the most expensive of the year at roughly $100 million. One of the reasons for the drop in overall spending is that so many of the projects are now smaller in scale, such as training facilities as opposed to full-fledged stadium projects. But don’t worry -- expectations for 2021 place spending up again at more than $1.2 billion, paced by the $175 million end-zone project at Texas and UAB’s new $174 million stadium.

Download the College Football Facility Spending

MIKE MCGEE'S LEGACY APPARENT IN ATHLETIC DEPARTMENTS

• Former South Carolina and USC AD Mike McGee, 80, died over the weekend, leaving one of the most impactful legacies in the business of college sports. McGee, through the Sports Management Institute (SMI) that he founded 30 years ago, has served as a mentor of sorts to nearly 80 ADs and commissioners -- a list that includes two of SBJ's last three ADs of the Year in Kentucky's Mitch Barnhart and Clemson's Dan Radakovich.
  
  
• The story of how McGee became so important in college sports is worth re-telling. An old-school football coach who was a closet intellectual (he earned a Ph.D. in higher ed), McGee’s first AD position came in the early '80s at Cincinnati. He admitted to me years ago that he was doing on-the-job training daily because he lacked experience. McGee later decided to establish SMI, a three-week training course for aspiring ADs sponsored by USC, Notre Dame and North Carolina. Each year, 20 to 25 administrators graduate from SMI, which has evolved into a two-week course, plus homework.
  
  
• Newspaper stories have focused on McGee as the AD who hired Lou Holtz and Steve Spurrier at South Carolina. But within the business of college sports, his lasting legacy is SMI. “In the early days, we really had to talk people into coming,” said USC COO & CFO Steve Lopes, a longtime McGee friend. “But the people who came to SMI kept getting AD jobs. It became a self-perpetuating deal. We don’t really market it; it’s a word-of-mouth program.”
            

TANDEM OF DEL CONTE, TEXAS, HARD TO BEAT

• Sometimes, really good quotes just don’t fit into the story that’s being told. That was the case in my SBJ story this week about Texas AD Chris Del Conte and his work to re-imagine football game days in Austin. Here are a couple of noteworthy quotes about Del Conte from two people who know him well:
  
  
  • JMI Sports President Tom Stultz said this about the combination of Del Conte, one of the nation’s best ADs, and Texas, a premier brand with deep resources: “The Longhorns bringing in somebody with Chris' skill set and energy -- it’s like giving somebody Park Place, Boardwalk, all the railroads, all the utilities, and all the hotels right at the start of Monopoly.”
    
    
  • Oak View Group President/Collegiate Division Dan Shell said Del Conte’s path to Texas -- which has included stops at Cal Poly, Washington State, Arizona, Rice and TCU -- helped shape him, because he didn’t always work at schools with such deep pockets. “He worked his way up this business. He’s been at places where he’s had to grind. This helps him in leading the department. He’s real and he’s done it. It also helps create a culture where nothing is given. It must be earned. That’s Chris at his core.”
    
    
• The Texas story goes deep into how the school is reshaping the fan experience, something Georgia Tech Senior Associate AD/External Operations Ayo Taylor-Dixon thinks about every day in Atlanta. “That next generation of fans doesn’t have that same fandom; they’re not in the same habit of going to the game. That’s a huge concern because they’re into other things. … How we create the next fans and get them to buy season tickets -- that is something we’re all worried about.”

SPEED READS

• Florida and Miami get the 2019 college football season rolling Saturday at Camping World Stadium, and per the Tampa Bay Times’ Matt Baker, there’s a lot riding in Week 0 for the Gators. Appearing on Paul Finebaum’s radio show, Baker said, "They’ve really rallied around Dan Mullen because he coached here under Urban [Meyer]. He’s a Gator to them. … But if they lose, it’ll be really interesting to see how, or if, things start to turn.” Meanwhile, Baker in his column writes the Canes and Gators will “have college football’s biggest stage of the weekend all to themselves. … Now all they have to do is prove they deserve it.”
  
  
• Rich Eisen bleeds maize and blue, so he had some fun with Ohio State on his Audience Network show yesterday, as the Buckeyes are looking to get a trademark for the word "The." Eisen, a Michigan alum, said: “There’s two things that Ohio State wants more than anything else. 1) Have Michigan on the mind all the time. We live rent-free in the brain of Ohio State fans, even though they’ve beaten our brains in. Perhaps it’s because Michigan leads the all-time series. Could be that. 2) Ohio State has to -- and this is very important -- distinguish itself from ‘an’ Ohio State University. Because we can get confused.”
  
  
• While sunshine is a frequent visitor to the state of Florida, so is heavy rainfall and lightning. But some bigger football programs in the state have only recently sprung for indoor football practice facilities. After years of talks, The U dedicated its $40 million indoor facility last fall. USF has been angling for one of its own in Tampa at the same price point, with around half of the funds already in place. For many at USF, a groundbreaking cannot come soon enough. Weather wreaked havoc on practices last week, and the Buccaneers were called upon to save a Saturday scrimmage after USF coach Charlie Strong got in touch with Bucs co-chair Bryan Glazer and GM Jason Licht, who offered up the team's indoor facility at the Advent Health Training Center.
  
  
• The Sun Bowl -- started in 1936 -- today announced the seventh corporate entity to title sponsor the annual game in El Paso -- and it's a gem. Frosted Flakes will take on naming rights for the Dec. 31 contest, with the game formally being called the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl. This is just the latest college football play for Kellogg's, which last week announced its Cheez-It brand will become a CFP sponsor (Cheez-It also title sponsors the bowl at Chase Field in Phoenix). Twitter naturally had fun with the new name. Stadium's Brett McMurphy: "Before you ask, yes I think it’s greatttt!"

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Something on the College beat catch your eye? Tell us about it. Reach out to either me (msmith@sportsbusinessjournal.com) or Austin Karp (akarp@sportsbusinessdaily.com) and we'll share the best of it. Also contributing to this newsletter is Thomas Leary (tleary@sportsbusinessdaily.com).