From anywhere on campus, a towering structure can be seen protruding from the south end zone of Jordan-Hare stadium. An official rendering of the largest video board in college athletics was released by Auburn Athletics Monday night, June 23.
The closer the board comes to completion, the more excitement increases for the 2015-16 football season.
Martha Koontz, public relations and communications specialist for Facilities Management, said the "topping out" took place Friday, June 26, where construction workers will hoist the highest beam to the top.
In the coming weeks, Gregory Forthofer, professional engineer and lead design project manager, said to expect activity from different contractors such as electricians, video board workers and metal panel workers.
"So now, you're starting to see two, three and four different contractors on the site at the same time, so it'll get a little hectic, but we're on schedule, and I think we're excited to have a successful project," Forthofer said.
According to Forthofer, the configuration of the lanes on Heisman Drive will be the same until the end of the project.
Forthofer also said the 32-feet-tall and 66-feet-wide audio cabinet will be the next step of construction for the board. He said the full board with the audio cabinet attached to the top is 185-feet-tall above the field, which is approximately half way up the stadium lights.
"So what you'll start to see is the delivery of the audio system, which will be on the top of the score board," Forthofer said. "And then also what you're going to start to see in the next few weeks is, what we call the metal cladding, or the metal panels that go around and kind of frame out the video board."
Forthofer said they will start placing the metal panels on the structure when the placing the black panels is finished.
In the rendering, an orange interlocking AU with a white border surrounding it is placed on top of the video board.
"That is actually part of the audio cabinet, so that will go on a screened mesh material that will be the face of the audio cabinet, because there's speakers in behind it, and so it's got to be able to project sound through that mesh fabric," Forthofer said.
According to Forthofer the previous audio system was positioned lower in the stadium, and the new system will be placed at the upper deck level above the press box.
"And what that will do, is that will increase the sound quality, because it'll be less reverberation off of different pieces of glass, you know, the press box on one side, the suites on the other, and that'll make for a higher quality sound system based on the orientation of where those speakers are," Forthofer said.
He said there will still be spaces for static advertising for Coca-Cola, Alpha and Yellow Wood below the 56-feet-tall and 190-feet-wide moving video screen, flanking the game clock.
Cassie Arner, associate athletic director for Strategic Communications, said they expect to utilize the larger video board during football games.
"Certainly there's a lot more real estate to work with now and the ability to show replays at a higher quality and also maybe the potential to do split screens, and do multiple video elements at the same time," Arner said. "The number of ways we can use this are limitless and what we're doing right now is working on the best use of the board, so that when it does come to August and September when we have fans in the stadium, they do see a better fan experience."
According to Arner, the philosophy of the Auburn game day experience with band music and house music will stay the same, even with the new audio system.
Structurally, Forhofer said the engineer has made sure the board is built to the proper building codes and safety factors, since it's right next to a large assembly space.
"Obviously, nothing is 100 percent collapse-free, I mean a direct hit from a tornado would be problematic, but it's designed to withstand building code wind speeds of plus 90 mile an hour wind speeds," Forthofer said.
He also said the foundation for the board is 15-20 feet into bedrock, which is approximately 35-40 feet existing grade.
"We've done what we think is feasible to keep the board from collapsing, or falling over, or tilting over, you know, all the different ways folks could think about doomsday," Forthofer said.
The video board is still projected for completion by the first home football game, Saturday, Sept. 12, where the Tigers face the Jacksonville State Gamecocks.
Forthofer said many people have seen the process of constructing the board through social media sites.
Auburn Athletics averages about 70,000 views a week on the live stream video of the board on Youtube, according to Arner.
"By the end of this week people will get to see exact, you know, how high it really is, I think it'll be a lot of fun," Forthofer said. "So I'm looking forward to it just as a spectator."
Forthofer also said students coming back for the fall semester will see a completely different board than when they left May 8.
"I think everyone's going to come back going, 'Wow,' there's a lot of work that got done, and they'll be able to enjoy it," Forthofer said.
Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman.
