Quote:FRANKLIN COLUMN: Stadium project will go on



Enough of the drive-by articles. Enough of the complaints and doubts from ticket holders at Saturday's Connecticut game. The sky is not falling.


Neither is the plan to expand and finance the Rutgers Stadium project.

It's interesting to watch university president Richard McCormick continue to run the other way from his initial enthusiastic endorsement of the project. So, too, watch university board members continue to run the other way from their initial approval of the project.

Even more disturbing is to listen to fans continue to blast this football team for not reaching their fourth straight bowl game, to listen to some people actually pondering a return to the days of playing Lafayette and Princeton.

It is amazing how many fans are suddenly totally disregarding the continued growth of this program, responding to reports that deem the department of athletics as inadequate, shrouded in deception and totally to blame for the current shortage of funds to support the completion of the expansion by next summer.

Can you believe the people on the second floor of the Louis Brown Athletic Center didn't have a clue, the foresight, that the economy would go in the crapper?

Sort of like what dragged down Wall Street from behind when you think about it.

Who knew? Well, you would be led to believe that everyone in America knew a financial crisis was coming except the department of athletics at Rutgers University.

Right.

Now, I am not suggesting that pulling the Director of Athletics out of Delaware State University is an unnecessary move. But the decision to bring him in as essentially a CFO for just athletics, to me, seems an obvious shot that that department is solely this project's stuttering scapegoat.

This decision does not exactly promote university unity.

This is a signal from the top that someone messed up and, "Hey, don't look at me."

The truth is that the stadium expansion is not about to be put on hold. In fact it cannot afford to stop, because the perception is growing that what we now have is "the same old Rutgers."

Which is to say it's screwing up everything again.

This project can not be postponed until the football team produces another 11-2 record and recaptures the country's attention.

The south end zone, which remains active every day with bulldozers and workers in hard hats, will be completed by the start of next season. Yes, there may be fewer than the 13,000 seats originally planned, but nothing dramatic.

This entire issue is about politics, about the positioning of power within the university and right on down to Trenton.

To read about the financial crisis throughout the campus, about the value of Rutgers' endowment being down 10 percent (more than $50 million), that all campus departments should plan on delaying or totally forgetting about "nonessential" spending and that spending for all capital projects is way over initial projections, well of course it stands to reason that the football stadium be included in those concerns.

Concerns, but not panic.

A 1-5 record is not going to change the course of Rutgers' climb into the upper echelon of college football. Since football coach Greg Schiano took this job the emphasis has been on building a program, not just producing a winning team every now and then.

The process at Rutgers, unlike the majority of high-profile college football programs, has not been in place for decades. This is still a work in progress, and progress means putting all the pieces together to generate revenue.

And perhaps more than anything, progress around here means changing attitudes of a fan base that has had it with losing and had it with broken promises.

And yet such short memories some of you have.

Who among you would have given anything, just one decade ago, for even one bowl experience? Who among you would you have danced along College Avenue, just a decade ago, to have three quite successful years out of four?

Will a new coach accelerate this progress? No.

Will a new Director of Athletics accelerate this progress? Definitely not. Who do you think hired Schiano and stood with him as the university president and the board applauded and said, "Let's do this!"

What administrators have now done is turn their commitment to create a beautiful stadium into pitching a circus tent.

Schiano's only fear from day one was that people would not grasp the big picture, that dissenters on campus and a long history of jaded fans would gut the goal because of a lack of patience, a lack of understanding and the footprints of a program that for years has been too stubborn to spend old money to make new money.

The big picture is that Rutgers football can be a source of state pride along with national recognition, and there is no way to put a price on that. The big picture, a painting that shows Joe Paterno at Penn State, could include increased revenue to the point where football can fund the construction of a library.

Or even fund the return of men's crew, men's tennis, etc.

The culture of Rutgers sports is unique to nearly every state university in the country, in that it is in the shadow of the country's biggest city and the concrete molded around professional sports. Sure, USC and UCLA are in the shadow of Los Angeles pro sports, but they have been on the college football map for nearly 50 years.

My goodness, Rutgers only recently discovered Mapquest.

Rutgers doesn't have to win a national championship in the next few years, it just needs to stay on the map. And it can not do that with a university divided or a state divided.

New Jersey, its state university in particular, needs to come together and, more importantly, stay together and get this project done and move on.

Rutgers, for whatever reasons, has been afraid of athletic success for years. You would think a university with a nationally-respected academic reputation would be confident enough and bold enough to expand such an obvious marketing tool.

It is about time that changes, and really, the task is not that complicated. All Rutgers has to do is get out of its own way.

Link

It was an opinion article--is there anywhere with the facts about how the stadium expansion is going to happen with the new realities?

Actually there are several articles. Here is one from GS and one from RU's AD. Both say it'll be scaled down a bit but that it will be completed.


Rutgers' Greg Schiano says football stadium expansion will be completed
by Tom Luicci and Brendan Prunty/The Star-Ledger
Wednesday October 15, 2008, 5:32 AM

Even in the face of an economic crisis and Rutgers University's announcement that it may consider cutting the cost of the football stadium's expansion project, football coach Greg Schiano is adamant the plan will still be completed.

"We're going to get the expansion done," Schiano said after practice Tuesday. "It's just a matter of 'Where are we going to do it more economically?' If you're going to have this facade on the side that is $4 million and pleasing to the eye -- put steel girders up. I don't care."
Noah K. Murray/The Star-LedgerRutgers Stadium

University President Richard McCormick and other officials Monday announced the possibility of scaling back the cost of the expansion project as part of a sweeping ethics and oversight overhaul. According to a report in Tuesday's Star-Ledger, university officials would not detail the scope of stadium cuts, but did state that all of the options are still open.
Greg Schiano

Schiano said that the project needs to be completed to accommodate fan interest in the team.

"People want to get in to our stadium to see us play," he said. "We've got to build seats for them."

Rutgers has seen its endowment value drop 10 percent recently and with potential budget cuts by the state, departments school-wide have been asked to delay or defer all non-essential spending.

The major portion of the expansion project will close the open (south) end of Rutgers Stadium along River Road, adding an additional 13,000 seats under the original plans. Schiano said the extent of the expansion may have to be modified.

"In the 10,000 area -- as long as we're getting a considerably more number of seats," he said. "That's the plan. Right now, it's too early to comment on exactly what that is.

"The negative is that the economy is in the dumper. The positive is that those people that do construction need work, too. So people are going to be more aggressively rebidding these jobs and they're going to come in at a better number. Between that and maybe making some changes, we've got to get it done."

With expansion construction well underway already, Schiano said it doesn't make sense now not to see the project through.

"We're into it," he said. "You can see we've got a multimillion dollar hole in the ground right now. We've got to finish it. How we do it -- that's what we're working on."

Rutgers Investment into Athletics a work in progress -NY Times Article

Quote:Lesniak said he hoped to raise about $10 million in private donations, not enough to close the $30 million financing gap, making it “certain” that the stadium renovation would be delayed.


But Mulcahy said he was determined to keep the renovations on time and under the $102 million budget. Precisely what may have to be cut has not been decided, he said, but he said he was committed to keeping all of the planned seating because the bonds would be repaid using revenue from ticket and concession sales. In interviews this week, Mulcahy and Schiano said that in stepping up spending on football and other programs, they were carrying out the wishes of university officials to compete at a national level.

“That decision was made long before I got here,” said Mulcahy, who was hired in 1998. Rutgers entered the Big East in football in 1991, but changing its schedule was not enough, Mulcahy said. “The problem was that we didn’t follow that commitment with the facilities that were necessary.”

Schiano actually makes sense. Forget the beautiful facade for the time being. Get the superstructure done, so that it's functionality is available. Once that's in place, the face can be added at a later time when monies become available. And if Rutgers continues to experience success, the monies will be available in fairly short order...

I agree Schiano has the right idea.. make it functionable.. then worry about dolling it up. 10k seats sold raise money.. whether they are fancy or plain jane.. Much like UCF did.. get the thing built first then bigger is better.... then fancy is fancier...