You know college athletics is in an arms race on the facilities front when even the programs on the lower end of the scale are going full stream ahead on major capital projects for their football program.
The latest case of that comes out in the Bay Area where San Jose State announced a groundbreaking for their new $40 million football operations center that prominently backup to the east side of the Spartans’ CEFCU Stadium.
“The Football Operations Center will be a game-changer for San Jose State University. We are building a winning program here and our new home will provide our players, coaches, and staff the opportunities to succeed on the field, academically, and through our Beyond Football program,” said San Jose State football head coach Brent Brennan in a release.
While some bleachers will be removed this summer, the bulk of construction work will not start until after the 2019 season and includes moving the team’s current scoreboard at the stadium.
Plans for the building were originally drawn up back in 2016 but it’s shovels meeting dirt now with over half of the $40 million already committed for the project. It’s a big undertaking for an athletics department where cash is generally hard to come by in recent years and that checked in at No. 98 in the country in USA Today’s listing of D1 finances -- behind such schools as New Hampshire and Cal Poly among others.
