AD Trev Alberts, Chancellor Ronnie Green and President Ted Carter have big stadium plans in the works
In 2023, Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium will celebrate its 100th anniversary. Nebraska President Ted Carter, UNL Chancellor Ronnie Green and Athletic Director Trev Alberts recognize what that date means.
Going forward, the trio also recognizes it’s their job to build and develop Memorial Stadium for its next 50 to 100 years.
On Thursday, Carter, Green and Alberts met with reporters for an hour to discuss several topics from stadium renovations to alcohol sales at Pinnacle Bank Arena and the new $300 million multimedia rights agreement the athletic department is on the verge of entering.
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Memorial Stadium renovations will be the biggest project yet
The Nebraska Board of Regents meeting Sept. 30 in Kearney has several key elements on the agenda. One of the most interesting is regarding future renovations to Memorial Stadium.
Carter called it the plan to make the plan. This project will be so massive and have so many moving parts that it will take an entire year to put the plan together before they make it public.
University officials essentially have asked the Board of Regents to approve this proposal so the planning process can begin. Fans have seen several major projects at Nebraska in the last 20 years, but Carter said this will be the biggest and provide the most challenges.
“Now we are going talk about a project that is the most complicated project we can undertake,” Carter said. “We literally are going to be repairing and rebuilding an airplane while we are flying it.
“I can understand that. In my own personal world, I rebuilt an aircraft carrier in 2006 for $2 billion that was already existing. This is not completely unlike that. Except we are not replacing nuclear reactors.”
Alberts joked: “We don’t think.”
The biggest elephant in the room though is fan displacement. A project of this size could more than likely displace fans from their seats, Alberts said. It will be no easy task for Alberts to navigate through all the challenges this project will bring.
“We have a 100-year-old stadium that is iconic that we love,” Alberts said. “The reality is there has been so much change and so much technological change, and I think we are behind. I think we need to dive into how do we ensure that the next 50 to 100 years of Memorial Stadium, that that fan experience and that modernization is there.”
That may mean fans not having access to their seats during the construction process.
“The disruption that could happen is going to be fairly significant,” Alberts said. “So what we need to do is instead of rushing anything or making mistakes that could have been avoidable, we need to bring together the very best people in our state and think through a holistic plan.”
Alberts added he has three primary goals: Modernize the stadium, enhance the fan experience and provide equitable and affordable access for fans.
“Some of the data (in the survey) was alarming to me,” Alberts said. “There are some things that we need to do differently in the stadium. We can address that in this plan.”
Other notes from Alberts, Green and Carter
***There are no plans to serve alcohol anywhere other than Pinnacle Bank Arena for the time being. Alberts praised arena manager Tom Lorenz several times during his talk, referring to him as a “great partner” to the University.
The decision to add alcohol in PBA for men’s and women’s basketball games was done strictly to enhance fan amenities. The university will profit only 10 percent from the sales, which Alberts estimates will be roughly $100,000.
The arena will offer beer, wine and liquor at events starting in November assuming the Board of Regents signs off on the plan at their Sept. 30 meeting.
***As for Haymarket Park, that is a completely different agreement with the university. As of now, alcohol sales at Husker baseball games are not on the table, but it is something that eventually could come.
***The biggest thing the 2021 Garth Brooks concert told Alberts about future alcohol sales in Memorial Stadium was this: “We are not ready.”
Alberts later said that the concert was a great event and helped get Husker fans comfortable again coming back to Memorial Stadium after the pandemic season of 2020.
“Everybody had a great time, but nobody was here the next day when it wasn’t such a great time cleaning up,” Alberts said. “Having the right infrastructure in place to manage all of that will be really important.”
***During his time at UNO, Alberts said they needed alcohol sales in Baxter Arena for hockey and basketball games to make the financials on their agreement work.
***Nebraska officially inked its multi-media rights agreement with PlayFly in Ireland before NU’s first game against Northwestern. The regents will vote to approve it next week. One of the most interesting parts of the deal is $2.25 million is worked in to go toward future name, image and likeness agreements.
Alberts said that could take a variety of forms, including putting that money into a collective or collaborative.
RELATED: NU closing in on a 15-year, $300 million MMR agreement with PlayFly Sports
***Alberts said roughly 30 to 35 percent of Nebraska’s top seats in the stadium are locked into grandfathered pricing set by former AD Bill Byrne. That is significantly higher than anywhere in the country. You get the sense fans could see the 20-plus-year-old grandfather clause come to an end to create a more equitable ticketing model which would include some seats with no donation cost.
“It was obviously really disruptive after Bill (Byrne) did what he did in the early 90s, so there was obviously a lot of tension around that,” Alberts said of ticket grandfathering. “I think it’s time for us to rethink. We need to have seats in the stadium that don’t require donations. We will have a lot of those. We are not going to be kicking anybody out of the stadium, but perhaps we are going to say it can’t be on the 50-yard line halfway up.”
***Nebraska has hired Collegiate Sports Associates to help with the process of hiring a new head football coach. CSA, located in North Carolina, in recent months has helped Bowling Green, Louisville, Nevada and Boise State in finding athletic directors for each institution.
CSA also lists as past clients several prominent institutions: Duke, Penn State, Clemson, Cal, Oklahoma, Florida State, Tennessee, Ole Miss, North Carolina, Missouri, Georgia, Texas A&M and South Carolina.
