If you’ve walked, driven or otherwise passed by anywhere near Jordan-Hare Stadium during the past week or so, you’ve noticed the new construction zone on Heisman Drive that’s been set up for the workers who will be putting up the new video board on the south end zone.
The reported size of 190-feet-by-57-feet will make this scoreboard the largest in college football.
This new board will be massive. It will be too loud with the also-new sound system that will be in place, and it’s going to cost a lot of money.
When everything is said and done, all of the upcoming upgrades to Jordan-Hare will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $14 million.
Recently AL.com was granted an open records request from the University and discovered that Auburn’s athletic department reported a $13.6 million deficit during the 2013-14 fiscal year which is certainly eye-opening.
It merits a discussion of whether or not these upgrades are really worth it in the immediate future.
Sure, it will be nice to have, and the crowds will definitely flock to see this new spectacle, but I don’t know if doubling the amount of the debt already incurred is a smart move.
Granted, I’m no financial manager, and I can’t say how the athletic department’s revenue will look for the next year.
For now, the University will pay the debt and the athletic department will reimburse it when the money shows up. But if the goal of Jay Jacobs and the athletic department is to improve the fan experience, it seems like there are other ways to go about it than digging into an already less-than-shallow pool of resources.
For example, increasing the power of the Wi-Fi signal inside the stadium was a priority for this past season, but with the ever-expanding use of iPhones and the like, increasing the amount of connectivity even more wouldn’t hurt.
That’s just one example. It’s clear the intention behind the new video board isn’t harmful; it’s going up to make Auburn have the greatest game day experience in the SEC, if not the country.
Already, you can simply Google “Auburn scoreboard” and dozens of articles will come up about this new project, so it’s not as if Auburn will be forgotten anytime soon.
If the goal is to keep Auburn on the map, an attention-grabbing scoreboard is certainly one way to do it. When that attention comes at the expense of meaningful resources, however, then it might not a viable tradeoff.
The Auburn Tigers, with all of their tradition and their storied history, aren’t going to fall off the college football map anytime soon. With this scoreboard, they definitely aren’t going anywhere. But the recent reports of the $13.6 million deficit warrant some consideration. Granted, the athletic department’s been fine for a long time.
The deficit could be wiped out by next year. If it’s not, then maybe we’ll start to reconsider if this scoreboard was not a needed upgrade, but merely something that seemed like a good idea at the time.
Sam Butler is a sports writer at The Plainsman. He can be reached at sports@ThePlainsman.com.
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