Buford didn’t need $62M football palace, but city leaders wanted it
No one associated with Buford High School says the football team needed a 10,000-seat, $62 million stadium. That’s not a case that can be made by anyone in any place.
The shiny new structure is what city leaders wanted.
They wanted a stadium that seats 10,000 people in a city of 17,000, for a school with 2,000 students. City officials wanted a stadium with two levels of 15 luxury suites towering above the stands. They wanted a video board with a 3,600-square-foot display that rivals many of those in stadiums for major college football teams.
Buford football certainly didn’t need any of those things for success.
The Wolves have won 14 state championships, including three in a row from 2019-21. They are 330-29 since 2000. Buford would win a lot more games over the next 25 years even if the city never built Phillip Beard Stadium, which hosts its first official game Thursday when Milton visits.
If there are any objections from community members about the cost of the stadium, then Tony Wolfe hasn’t heard them. Wolfe has worked in Buford schools for 30 years and currently is its director of athletic facilities. During a recent media tour, Wolfe said there’s “widespread support” for the stadium among the city’s residents.
That view is supported by the large crowd of people who showed up in the stifling July heat for the stadium’s ribbon-cutting ceremony and open house.
“They absolutely love it,” Wolfe said. “They love Buford football. They love to see our school put the money into supporting our students.”
If a society’s grand buildings are reflections of the institutions it values most, then high school football must be near the top of the list for Buford’s residents. They love it more than every other place — except a handful in Texas that spent even more in inflation-adjusted dollars on football stadiums for high school teams.
I wanted to ask the stadium’s namesake, Phillip Beard, why he believed Buford needed an expensive new stadium. He’s chair for both the city Board of Commissioners and the Buford Board of Education. Beard didn’t respond to multiple requests for interviews about the stadium project.
An investigation published by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2018 found that Beard’s family “holds so much sway that the town literally can’t do business without it.” Beard’s nephew, Brad Weeks, sits on the three-person board of commissioners with him. Beard, a Buford native, was first elected to the city commission in 1975.
Buford City Manager Bryan Kerlin responded to my interview requests with an email listing several accolades won by the city’s schools and information about the stadium’s funding.
Kerlin said money for the stadium came out of the city’s general and enterprise funds, so it didn’t require taking on debt or using revenue from property or sales taxes. Paying for the stadium “had no impact on teacher salaries, classroom resources, or any educational funding for” the city’s schools, Kerlin said.
Wolfe said he recalls first hearing talk about a new stadium after Buford played a big game against Mill Creek during the 2022 season. About 10,000 fans packed into Tom Riden Stadium, which has about 5,100 seats.
“I think the (new) facility will bring more fans,” Wolfe said. “They won’t feel left out.”
The stadium includes some features designed to accommodate people who aren’t big donors to the football program.
Wolfe said about 900 of the 1,500 premium chair back seats in the stands will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. The top two rows of that section will be reserved for older adults. Wolfe said student tickets are available for $3.
Those are nice touches. But it was weird hearing Wolfe talk about reserved seating and VIP parking for corporate sponsors. It was strange to see two floors of luxury suites with catering kitchens on each level. I felt as if I were at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, not a high school field in small-town Georgia.
“It’s a great opportunity to fund athletics,” Wolfe said of the luxury suites. “It’s hard to pass up. I think we could have sold 25 suites.”
Per research by Front Office Sports, seven stadiums that host high school games cost more to build than Buford’s. However, five of them are shared by more than one high school. Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, Ohio, is supported financially by the Pro Football Hall of Fame and hosts an NFL exhibition game each year.
So, it appears that Buford’s stadium is America’s second-most expensive stadium built for a single high school team. The leader is Allen (Texas) High, which opened an 18,000-seat stadium in 2012 at a cost of $85 million in today’s dollars. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, the school in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area had an enrollment of 5,273 students in 2023-24, about 2.5 times higher than Buford’s enrollment now.
The extravagance of Buford’s new stadium surely will raise eyebrows among people who worry about the supremacy of athletics over academics in schools. I count myself among that group. What does a $62 million stadium for high school football say about Buford’s priorities?
It may not say as much as you think.
Many of the usual knee-jerk criticisms don’t land with Buford’s stadium. The city generates far more money than nearby larger cities, thanks in part to its large natural gas network. And spending patterns suggest that the people of Buford love football in addition to academics and arts, not at the expense of them.
In 2019, the city constructed buildings for the high school on Buford Highway with $85 million drawn from Gwinnett County’s 1% retail tax known as E-SPLOST. The 50-acre campus includes an athletics facility, but also a three-story academic building with 214,000 square feet of space. There’s a good view of the gleaming performing arts from the football stadium’s suites.
Those investments help Buford High excel in more than sports.
Buford High earned a score of 88.2 in the state’s latest College and Career Ready Performance Index, compared with 78.9 for the average Georgia school. The school is one of 94 in the state to earn School of Distinction status for its advanced placement programs. Buford High boasts of 21 GHSA state literary championships and five state championships for one act plays.
Still, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the stadium was built for reasons that go beyond helping Buford’s students. ESPN is set to broadcast the Milton game, and three other Buford home games this season also will be on television. There’s also the near certainty that the stadium will draw more athletes from outside of Buford, making it harder for local kids to make the team.
A $62 million high school football stadium doesn’t say anything good about the role of sports in society. Even if Buford shows similar care for academics, the money from the general fund could have been used for other priorities. But Buford can hardly be blamed for the outside importance America puts on sports (it’s why I can make a living writing about them).
The big ambitions of pro and college sports have trickled down to the high school level. Buford officials decided they wanted to be part of that trend. They built an impressive stadium, though I was struck by one thing I saw inside the field house near the end of the tour.
The two-story building beyond one end zone includes a 5,000-square-foot event room. There’s a huge terrace for people to watch games from. The training room is better than some I’ve seen at professional sports venues. The dressing room for Buford’s cheerleaders looks like something from a Hollywood set.
But the football locker room is relatively spartan. There are no individual stalls. There are long benches around the outside of the room with hooks for players to hang their equipment.
Wolfe explained the football team’s main locker room is just across the street, so officials decided not to make the one at the stadium too fancy.
“That would have been excessive,” Wolfe said.
It turns out the people who spent $62 million on a high school football stadium do have limits.
About the Author
