Memorial Stadium reno, Devaney reseating, Nebraska's push for its own version of Penn State White Out + ANOTHER new mascot on the way?
Nebraska athletic director Troy Dannen made his monthly appearance on Huskers Radio Network’s “Sports Nightly” show on Tuesday night.
Here are the most notable updates from Dannen regarding renovations at Memorial Stadium and the Devaney Center, some additional thoughts on Matt Rhule’s contract extension, the potential for Nebraska to add ANOTHER mascot and the Huskers’ push to have their own version of the annual Penn State White Out.
Memorial Stadium renovation updates
More extensive, significant updates on the Memorial Stadium renovations and the timeline are estimated to come “before the holidays” in “early December,” Dannen says, during his next monthly radio show appearance. For now, it’s about getting the planning details in order before an announcement comes.
“We have taken more steps,” Dannen said. “I’m out talking to donors about the stadium, and I think the plans are all in place. It’s just a matter of, what are the protocols now we have to jump through in order to make sure we have all of the the I’s and T’s dotted and crossed as per what our university protocols are.”
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He explained why it’s important to implement renovations and upgrades to Memorial Stadium – which this author, like plenty of other people, affectionately calls “The Cathedral of Lincoln” – citing three primary reasons.
1 – Fan experience
“The stadium offers event experience that was acceptable at a certain point in time, but when you compare the fan experiences that are out there today, it doesn’t hold a candle to (others). We’ve seen, just with the concessions this year, the stadium is just not equipped to, basically, operate in today’s world. So, one, we need to get that done.”
2 – Aging infrastructure
“It’s 100 years old. The south end is 50 (years old), and we haven’t done a lot of work. There’s a lot of deferred maintenance, there’s just a lot of core structural work, frankly, that is long overdue, and that may be the most important part. I’m not saying there are life safety issues. But I am saying that there is a point in time when the concrete and the rebar is 100 years old and the sewer tiles are 100 years old, and things that need to be updated. That’s true with every old stadium anywhere in the country. The goal is to have a stadium that’s multi-generational – one that, when the stadium is done … it will serve our kids and their kids. The next two generations will be served by the stadium the way our generation and our predecessors’ generation was served by it. Making sure that’s the case (is a primary goal).
3 – To paraphrase Dannen in a frank manner: Making more money
“The stadium is a revenue engine. I’ll get (metaphorically) killed over reseating. I’ll get killed in volleyball (when we reseat), I’ll get killed in football when we reseat. But the fact of the matter is, reseating is fairly commonplace, and the the biggest area to generate revenue in an athletic department is its football stadium. If you look at the size of the stadium versus what we generate in the stadium, we’re probably generating 50 percent per game of what we should. … Technically, we seat 82,000 and change. We say 90 (thousand) a lot, but there’s 82,000 and change in there from a seat standpoint. We generate about 50 percent of what we should. When the stadium the renovation is done, we’ll generate what we should. It’s that money that then gets fed back into the athletes. It gets fed back into the program to help things continue to grow. It’s almost a self-perpetuating engine, if you will, financial engine.
“If you look at the why, those are the three ‘why’s” of why the stadium project needs to happen. And you can say, ‘Well, we don’t need the money,’ or, ‘the fan experience is fine.’ And that’s great, but it’s still 100 years old. And there are still maintenance issues and repair issues that come with a 100-year-old stadium and the 50-year-old (portion) on the south end. There are things that have to be done. If you don’t win a football game, and if you don’t want anything to change, it has to be done just because of the age of the stadium.”
Devaney Center reseating
Dannen concluded the stadium updates by sharing the latest on the upcoming changes to the Devaney Center.
Those renovations, he said, will begin in the spring after the gymnastics and wrestling seasons have concluded. The arena will be shut down, and “we’ll replace all the seating,” Dannen says, with approximately 1,500 seats getting added. Those 1,500 seats will be added mostly to the upper-north side – the standing room-only side.
“That plywood covers the old treads from when it was just a basketball arena,” Dannen said.
The Nebraska AD estimates the result of the renovations will increase the capacity from 8,309 (its current official capacity) to a little more than 10,000.
In addition, the arena will get chair-back seating on “three of the four levels on the lower (level),” he said. “All the students will be on one end. If you’re looking at it from facing the benches, it would be to your right, is where all the students will congregate.
“There’ll be some seating movement along with it,” he added. “The one thing that I think is really important – and I’m proud that our crew, particularly Tyler Kai (Nebraska’s Deputy AD for Revenue Generation), found a way to get done – is no one will lose their seats. If you have season tickets, you’ll have them. They may not be where you want them or where they (are) now. That’s the reseat part. But nobody’s getting kicked out of the building. It just may be a different seat than people are used to it, and that comes with pain. It’s never been done here. I’m gonna guess that nobody wanted to take the pain on that comes with it. However, if you want to be a fully functional 2025 athletic department, this is what you do. So, that will happen.
“The part that will be behind the scenes a little bit, the volleyball locker room space, team room space, really hasn’t been touched since we moved into the building. That will be updated, modernized, some of the modalities for physical treatment and not just rehab, but recuperation, will be integrated into that so they’ll have, as they should, a first-class space. … Change is necessary. And no matter how much success you’re having or not having, it doesn’t remove the need to change and evolve along the way.”
Black Out game vs. USC: An annual fixture? The Nebraska version of the Penn State White Out?
Excluding the renovation updates, arguably the most important portion of Dannen’s interview session (or the most intriguing, at least) came when he glowed about Nebraska’s first-ever Blackout Game against USC.
The response and buy-in from the Nebraska fan base to make the Blackout such a tremendous atmosphere, combined with the positive feedback Dannen says that he, Matt Rhule and many others have received from all over – including on the recruiting trail, according to Rhule – have helped pave the way for a potential annual fixture. It was such a success that it has Dannen thinking big – as in, big enough that he hopes it will begin a new tradition at Nebraska that will mirror the beloved tradition that its upcoming opponent started in the early 2000s to, in a beautiful twist of irony, combat the Husker fans.
That’s right. Dannen is hopeful that the Nebraska Blackout Game can evolve into an annual tradition in the same vein as Penn State’s White Out.
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“At a place (like Nebraska), it’s a fine line when you’re trying to do fun, creative things and also honor the brand and the history,” Dannen said. “But to be able to do that, one, I thought it was great. Two, it’s something we need to do every year. One of the (ideas) – I’ve spoken to the Nebraska Farm Bureau because we have an interest in that becoming a ‘cause game’ of some sort, that the Blackout game is on behalf of something. We really want to tie it to farmers and agriculture in the state of Nebraska. So, we’ve asked for their help, and what is it that we could tie into that game so that the game always becomes a ‘cause game,’ an attention-grabbing game for some ag/farm cause in the state of Nebraska. I think you’ll see it (again), and I think you’ll see something attached to it next year as well.
“… It works better at a night game, and it certainly works better late in the season. But I’d like to get to the point where, like, Penn State has a carve-out in (the Big Ten’s) TV deal for a night game for their White Out. I would like to have that same carve-out for our Blackout moving forward.”
Assuming that the plan comes to fruition again next season, expect some wrinkles and additions for the Blackout Game in 2026. Implementing the Blackshirts’ skull and crossbones logo somewhere on the field will be one. A different alteration on the black Adidas uniforms could be another, but that one is less concrete.
“The uniforms are really a two-year thing. The concept was hatched a year ago,” Dannen said. “There’s a new style of uniform coming from Adidas, so how does that integrate with this? That’s out of my comfort zone, or my knowledge zone, if you will, but I know that’s something that we’re working on.”
“… We’ll see if we can notch it up again next year. I thought Adidas did a great job with the black uniforms, the guys loved them. It’s something we’re going to see in our repertoire moving forward.”
Nebraska to add ANOTHER mascot?
“Sports Nightly” host Kyle Crooks brought up a fact that Dannen said he has received some emails recently about the request to add a new mascot – yes, that would be ANOTHER mascot, a THIRD mascot, to join Herbie Husker and Lil’ Red – and he gave Dannen the floor to explain away that unforeseen request.
“Yeah, I don’t know. Somebody decided that we should have a female Herbie,” Dannen said. “So, (they) started an email campaign, and then a couple of local establishments posted the QR code so people can send an email, an automated email. I (will) say: We’re not adding a mascot. But I also vetted it.
“Automated emails tend to find the circular box fairly quickly, but I did hear from enough people. And our coaches have zero interest. In fact, a couple of them find it offensive, a couple of our female sport coaches found it offensive. So, we’re leaning into Herbie. Herbie, obviously, went on the basketball court (design) this year. There’s very traditional branding here, but we’re gonna lean in more and more and more to Herbie. But we’re not gonna go beyond Herbie.”
So, we can consider that request officially denied and any speculation officially shut down.
And speaking of Herbie being on the court, Dannen expounded upon what “the goal” was when the decision was made to put him on the PBA floor design.
“I don’t know if anybody knows this, but a lot of us hated the design of the court last year,” Dannen said. “We tried to order new panels for the center, and we were gonna debut Herbie last year. We just couldn’t get it done in time, so we just decided to wait until this year. It is the first of the integration. You’ll see more branding from gear related to Herbie, and there’s gonna be a modification of Herbie for each sport, for the sports to wear as well.”
More on Matt Rhule’s contract extension
For those of you who rolled their eyes while reading that previous section, or for those who pooh-pooh the pumping up of a Blackout game with a response akin to, “Who cares? Just win the damn game, man.”
To you, I would say, “Yep. I hear you. Totally get it. Totally with you.”
And that’s all. The only “but” I would add is: “But … the Blackout WAS indeed very cool. And it WAS a terrific atmosphere. I think you should at least admit that part, if nothing else.”
But, hey, again … I get it. Gotta win the game for an atmosphere like that to truly matter or for the impact to be truly felt and to truly reviberate in a tangible way afterward.
Just win.
There was a not-big-but-also-not-small group of people who had a similar reaction when, just two days before that 21-17 loss to USC in the Blackout, the official news broke that Rhule had signed a contract extension with Nebraska.
Dannen got into that, too, providing some additional perspective on Tuesday as to why the extension offer was made. Weeding through some of the comments that were reiterations of what he already said at the press conference on the day of the announcement, these are some newer insights he had not previously shared:
“When the Penn State job opened, naturally, Matt’s name was tied to that and when he talked (in his Oct. 13 press conference), he really puppeted something that he and I talked about. In this day and age of money, the rev share is one thing, but most of the teams we’re competing against, or trying to aspire up to, are finding ways above the rev share cap to make sure, competitively, they can be with everybody in that group,” Dannen said. “We had done an OK job, but we hadn’t gotten to that point yet. That was really the next thing we needed to do. If nothing else, that prompted some tree shaking, if you will, because this is not the day and age – no longer do we go and ask everybody to give $100 to 1890 and 1890 can redistribute that money. Those days, after the settlement, are passed. So, what we’re trying to do, really, is find what I would say is true NIL. How do we partner an athlete along with a company and maybe a sponsor here? Maybe that sponsor doesn’t need to pay me, maybe the sponsor needs to have an additional à la carte option for sponsorship which is, ‘Why don’t you do an NIL deal with one of our players?’ Instead of paying me, you pay the player. Reallocation of MMR is what that’s termed in the business.
“With the help of our president, with the help of our board and getting the blessings, we’re able to free up several million dollars that gets us above the cap in a way that we can compete with the other schools financially who are above the cap. … The goal in all of this is not to go ask the donors for it. The donors carried us for the last couple of years in the world just to get us where we were. The rules changed to stop those donor-funded collectives. I’m gonna be going to the donors for the stadium project – I already am – so we have to find other ways to fund the above-the-cap stuff, besides ticket prices and donors, and I think we’ve got a good plan in place.”