Seminoles taking new tack in pursuit of football-only facility
Whenever Florida State officials finally decide how to go about building a new football operations center, critics will be hard-pressed to suggest they didn’t do enough research.
Nearly a year and a half after former head coach Jimbo Fisher first started pushing for the project, the Seminoles are not exactly back at the drawing board -- but they’re not quite at the finish line, either.
During a sit-down interview with Warchant.com this week, FSU President John Thrasher explained that the school is now attacking the project from some new angles, and it likely won’t decide on a course of action until the end of summer.
“It’s a very expensive proposition,” Thrasher said. “We want to make sure that we look at all options and see which one best fits with what we already have against what our potential revenues are. Those are the things I’m going to look forward to.”
No key players inside the FSU athletics department, Seminole Boosters Inc., or even the university administration seem to be opposed to the football program having its own expanded facility. It is seen as a necessity for two primary reasons:
* The current football operations exist inside of the cramped Moore Athletics Center, where they share limited space with other sports, academic classrooms and various departments;
* All of the Seminoles' key rivals either already have, or will soon have, football-only facilities that will be viewed as extremely attractive to recruits.
But more than 15 months after the concept was first reported by Warchant, it has faced one challenge after another.
For starters, there still are differing opinions at the highest levels about whether a newly constructed standalone facility is needed, or if the existing Moore Center could be renovated and expanded.
There was a coaching change last December -- with Fisher leaving abruptly and Willie Taggart arriving from Oregon -- which led to a delay while Taggart’s input could be taken into consideration.
Then when the university recently received a feasibility study from architectural consulting firm Populous, there apparently was some sticker shock regarding what the facility would cost.
“They gave us the gold standard,” Thrasher said. “Now we’re going to look at the slightly-less-gold standard, in terms of what we already have and how it can be positively modified to meet the needs of FSU for a number of years.”
That’s not to say the Seminoles are ready to scrap the idea of a standalone building. Just last week, Taggart told Warchant he was convinced that was a much better option than renovating the Moore Center: “Personally, I don't want a Band-Aid. I want to do what's right for the future of the Florida State University football program."
“Aspirationally, that’s what we’d all want,” Thrasher said, when asked about Taggart’s comments. “If I had a magic wand, I’d say, ‘Over here, let’s build this nice, new standalone facility. And I think Willie feels the same way. But on the other hand, I think he’s also realistic that we don’t have a Phil Knight, you know, here supporting us. So we’ve got to go out and look at our donors and ask them to invest in the future of Florida State on an incremental basis.”
Phil Knight, of course, is the University of Oregon benefactor who funded a $68 million football facility for the Ducks five years ago. Taggart worked out of that building last year, but he has privately told FSU officials that the Seminoles’ complex does not need to be nearly as lavish.
With that in mind, the university is asking Populous to make cost-saving revisions to the initial proposal, which was reviewed during an FSU Board of Trustees retreat 10 days ago in Ponte Vedra, Fla.
Meanwhile, Thrasher, athletics director Stan Wilcox and a small group of other decision-makers are planning to take a trip next month to a handful of other universities to check out their state-of-the-art facilities. The tour is expected to include Clemson, which opened its $55 million football building in January 2017.
“It will give us a chance to measure what they’ve done versus what we can do,” Thrasher said, adding that he also has asked FSU Board of Trustees chair Edward Burr to take a more active role in the process.
Burr, a Jacksonville businessman, has spearheaded and managed a number of residential, recreational and commercial projects throughout his career.
“He’s a developer,” Thrasher said. “This is what he does in his life. So I want him involved in all this. And he’s agreed to take the time.”
How much time, of course, is the question.
Since FSU first started working on this project, the University of Miami already has begun construction and raised funds for a new $34 million football facility, which is scheduled to be completed in August. And the University of Florida Board of Trustees voted in March to spend $65 million on a new standalone football facility.
That means the Seminoles’ biggest conference rivals – Clemson and Miami – and their biggest in-state rivals will all have new football-only buildings.
No one at FSU is naive to the implications.
“We’re doing pretty well, but we don’t want to fall behind, either,” Thrasher said. “Athletics is the front porch [of the university] for a lot of folks. And in order to be competitive, we have to have good facilities and be sure that they’re up to date.”
Because the Populous revision will take some time, and because FSU’s campus-wide Raise the Torch fundraising campaign will wrap up on June 30, Thrasher said the Seminoles likely will make a final decision in July or August.
It likely won’t be an easy call. Even if the costs come down to something more manageable, the athletics department still has to balance that with other needs, such as endowing scholarships and making sure other sports programs are not neglected.
One way or another, Thrasher is determined that the project will go forward. And soon.
“The timeframe is now,” he said. “We’ve got to start now. I think we’ve got to start planning it … so we can decide what we’ve got to raise, and how long that’s going to take.
“It’s a priority for me. It’s a priority for me to get it done.”
What “it” is, however, likely won’t be known for a couple more months.
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COMING FRIDAY: More from our interview with FSU President Thrasher, including comments about fundraising, baseball coach Mike Martin and more.
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Talk about this story with other FSU Football Fans on The Tribal Council