With Scott Barnes and Bob de Carolis, talking everything Reser Stadium

Jonathan Smith and Scott Barnes (Source: Oregon State Sports Information)

On Tuesday, five days after the seismic announcement that Oregon State will “complete” Reser Stadium, I spoke for a half-hour with Scott Barnes via telephone.

The Beavers’ athletic director seemed flush with emotion over reaction to plans for a $153-million project that will upgrade the west side of Reser and augment the $80-million renovation to the east side that was completed in 2005. From almost the day he took over for Todd Stansbury in December 2016, Barnes has been working behind the scenes to raise funds to bring the stadium into the 21st century.

“It’s been exciting to be able to finally talk about it publicly,” said Barnes, 58, who has been in athletic administration for 24 years at Humboldt State, Eastern Washington, Washington, Utah State, Pittsburgh and, the last four years, at OSU. “Beaver Nation is very excited. Of all the projects I’ve been involved with through my career, this has been the most enthusiastically received by our major donors.

“It has been really fun to talk to them about it. They understand the need. They like the overall goals. They’re all in.”

Last Thursday, during a Zoom conference with school president F. King Alexander and football coach Jonathan Smith, Barnes revealed singular gifts of $50 million and $10.5 million toward the $85 million goal in private donations that, together with $68 million in revenue bonds, will cover the expense of the project.

Given the opportunity Tuesday to break the news via kerryeggers.com that he has secured the remaining $20.5 million in donor gifting, Barnes demurred.

“Can’t say that yet,” he said with a laugh, “but we’re continuing to have conversations. We’re grinding away.” He said he hoped to have the additional donations in place “within the next few months.”

Scott Barnes (Source: Oregon State Sports Information)

In the past, Barnes has floated the general idea of a multi-purpose stadium for use more than seven home football games and graduation each year. Last Friday, he revealed specifics, which include a proposed public/private health and emergency care center, an interactive welcome center for new and prospective students and a conference center for faculty and staff.

There are other universities that have tailored football stadium construction around multi-purpose means in recent years. Did Barnes pattern his plan after one or more of them?

“Not really,” he said. “How robust our 365-day usage could be … is unique to college athletics. There are some college stadiums that have multi-uses, but to have a health center, a student welcome center and conference and meeting space — this is pretty robust. It’s been a foundational goal of ours; we’re delighted we’ve put together a plan and are hopeful it moves forward as scheduled.”

Does funding from the two major gifts come up front or is it spread out over a period of years — say 10 or 20 years?

“That time line isn’t accurate,” Barnes said. “But most lead gifts come in over time, over more than a year or two. These gifts will be over time, too.”

In a press release, Barnes said the west side of the stadium will provide fans “the closest proximity to the playing field of any college football stadium in the country.” How so? Barnes said the premium seating on the new side will be positioned much lower than on the old side, where the students sit (or stand). And the seating will be angled more so that even the higher seats will be closer.

“Our premium seating on the west side will be less than 100 feet from the field,” Barnes said. “We shifted it closer to the field; the design creates more seating in proximity.”

I asked Barnes how realistic is it to expect fans to be able to attend football games this fall.

“We’re really hopeful; we’re planning on it,” he said. “In the COVID era, we will always have contingency plans, but we think we’ll get there with vaccine distribution. We also believe we might be able to have family members of student-athletes in baseball and softball attend some games in the spring, and move on from there, if our local health authority approves it.”

No skyboxes will be built on the west side. The suites on the east side have been difficult to sell, and results of a market survey of 2,700 fans conducted by OSU athletics showed they prefer other smaller means of premium seating.

“You can put those into four buckets — loge seating, ‘living room’ box seating, club level and a Founders Club for lead gifts of a certain amount,” Barnes said.

The premium seating is sold in blocks of four; if individuals or groups want them side by side to make it eight seats, 12 or so on, they can be accommodated.

Barnes said last Friday that Reser’s anticipated capacity will be between 34,000 and 39,000. That’s a fluid number, but it sounds as if those are the parameters. That is significantly smaller than the 43,000-plus capacity today, with a record crowd of more than 47,000.

Two things factored into this. One, college football crowds are growing smaller throughout the country. In Corvallis, the preponderance of night games — and not knowing kickoff times sometimes until six days prior — has made it a tougher ticket to sell. The cost of attendance has grown high enough that more fans are satisfied to watch a game on TV. There is also the theory that fewer seats will — at least in good times — create a scarcity of tickets so they are harder to come by, thereby increasing the demand for them.

“It’s a combination of things,” Barnes said. “It’s about creating the best experience for fans, about looking at the history of our attendance to satisfy our needs and growth. We’ve analyzed attendance figures over a decade and a half and understand the trends. We’re confident we’ll have the right size. We also have a bit of ‘flex’ space — standing-room only to accommodate larger crowds for rivalry or other big games.”

Even so, anything under 45,000 puts Oregon State 11th among the Pac-12 schools in terms of capacity, ahead of only Washington State. Here’s the full list with the venue’s capacity, along with the all-time record crowd in parenthesis:

1. UCLA, Rose Bowl, 90,888 (91,136)

2. USC, LA Memorial Coliseum, 77,500 (93,607)

3. Washington, Husky Stadium, 70,089 (72,500)

4. California, Memorial Stadium, 62,467 (83,000)

5. Arizona, Arizona Stadium, 57,400 (59,920)

6. Oregon, Autzen Stadium, 54,000 (60,055)

7. Colorado, Folsom Field, 53,613 (54,972)

8. Arizona State, Sun Devil Stadium, 53,599 (74,963)

9. Stanford, Stanford Stadium, 50,414 (94,000)

10. Utah, Rice-Eccles Stadium, 45,807 (47,825)

11. Oregon State, Reser Stadium 34,000-39,000 (47,249)

12. Washington State, Martin Stadium, 32,952 (40,306)

I think Oregon State should have gone for a capacity about the size of Utah’s. I understand the arguments against it, but I don’t buy the need to create a “scarcity of tickets.” Play good enough football and you’ll draw the fans to fill it — or at least give yourselves a chance to.

Barnes admitted the small capacity will force OSU to raise ticket prices.

“There will be some adjustments to ticket pricing,” he said. But he said there will also be family packages and lower-priced ticket options available.

Construction will begin at the end of the 2021 season and continue through the 2022 season, with completion prior to the start of the 2023 campaign.

“We’ll plan thoroughly to accommodate fans during construction, and also to accommodate our coaches and players and games operations people and the media,” Barnes said. “We’re meeting on that now to solve those challenges. It’s not a perfect circumstance, but you get through it and look forward to the following season when it’s all complete.”

There is a $35 million deficit projection because of revenue shortfalls for the 2020-21 academic year due to COVID-19. Add that to the existing athletic department debt of $40 million and it’s enough to offer pause. Barnes believes the financial situation will be eased by the renovation to the stadium.

“There are two forces working in conjunction with each other,” the OSU AD said. “The leverage provided by the $85 million (in donations) brings our debt service much lower. That along with new revenue streams will help drive our debt down. We believe we can generate more than $5 million a year in new revenue.”

Jonathan Smith (Source: Oregon State Sports Information)

That will be contingent, of course, on Smith building a winning football program. The completion of Reser helps him immeasurably in recruiting, but it also places additional pressure on the coach to win now.

Bob de Carolis

• I spoke with another man who had a great deal to do with construction at Reser —Bob de Carolis, who for the past three years has been deputy athletic director at Santa Clara in the Bay Area. I asked the former OSU AD (2002-14) how he felt about news that the project he worked so hard to get started nearly two decades ago will finally see completion.

“It’s awesome,” de Carolis said. “I sent a quick note to Scott to congratulate him. It’s great they’ve been able to figure it out. It’s a great thing for Beaver Nation.”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way. If somebody’s going to write those checks, it’s a good thing. They had to get a little creative with the different tenants (as a multi-use facility) … We always knew it was a challenge and you had to look at it differently. I’m just glad it’s going to get done. It’s a big accomplishment, especially at a place like Oregon State where you’re challenged with resources.”

De Carolis, 69, rents an apartment in Santa Clara. He still has a place in Corvallis and a vacation home in Sunriver. Bob said he is dealing “well” with the Parkinson’s Disease for which he was diagnosed several years ago, walking every day and keeping active. I’m glad about that. He’s a good man.

• The question everyone has asked me since last Friday: Who is the anonymous donor ponying up $50 million, the largest gift ever to the athletic department and matching the largest ever to the school?

I don’t believe it was Phil Knight. I spoke with retired Nike president Charlie Denson — a Utah State grad but a Corvallis native and ardent OSU sports fan — and he doesn’t think it was Knight, either. I’m doubtful Phil would want to contribute to the football program that is his school’s arch-rival and, coincidentally, just knocked off his beloved Ducks.

I don’t think it was the Reser family. If they were donating the funding, they surely wouldn’t be averse to making it public. Barnes said the facility will remain as Reser Stadium, with a naming rights contract that continues several years into the future.

Some other possibilities that come to mind:

• Wes Edens, co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks and a 1984 Oregon State graduate. Here’s a link to a story I wrote on Wes about a year ago.

• Jim Whyte, a former Beaver track and field competitor who donated $7.5 million to construction of a track at OSU a decade ago. I don’t think he would gift $50 million toward a football stadium, however.

• Jensen Huang, founder of the graphics-processor company NVIDIA who earned his electrical engineering degree at Oregon State in 1984.

• Turkish philanthropist and billionaire Husnu Ozyegin, another OSU engineering grad. Could be!

• Jon DeVaan, a former corporate VP at Microsoft who carries undergrad degrees from OSU in mathematics and computer science.

• Dennis Powell, a former CFO with Cisco Systems, Inc., who graduated from OSU in business administration in 1970.

• Could it be the Valley Foundation — named after late OSU graduates Wayne and Gladys Valley — which has been so generous to the school through the years?

I don’t know. I don’t know if we’ll ever know. If you know, though, please let me know.

• President Alexander has received kudos from many quarters for his press conference comments on the necessity of completing the Reser project. He was direct and to the point.

“It opens up the west side of stadium to be a fully functional 365-day a year facility that helps us recruit and keep students,” Alexander said. “It eliminates $70 million in deferred maintenance, which gives us the opportunity to do the seismic upgrades we need to do on the west side.

“This is not a time to stop looking and moving forward. We’ve been planning this for three years. It’s an important time to make sure our student enrollments are going to be coming and showing up. This isn’t simply a football issue; this is about recruitment of students all over the country and keeping our Oregonian students here. This is about giving them a comprehensive student experience. … about re-engaging and engaging our alumni in sporting events that bring them back to campus and lead them to gifts like this. Many of our academic gifts wouldn’t happen if we weren’t succeeding in both. … we want to give our students the best possible experience they can have, which includes an intercollegiate program that competes with the best. And that’s in the classroom and on the courts.”

Somebody once described athletics as the “front porch of a university.” In some ways, it’s a living room and kitchen, as well. Oregon State has never had more financial gifts, or a bigger increase in enrollment the following year, as it did after the Fiesta Bowl victory over Notre Dame in 2001.

In the film classic “Horse Feathers,” Groucho Marx utters the immortal line, “We want to build a university the football team can be proud of.” Now, that’s taking it a bit too far.

Alexander, though, seems to be a man who understands the importance of athletics to a university. That’s good to hear.

Readers: who do you think made the $50 million dollar donation? I would love to hear who you think it is in the comments below.

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