Above Kyle Field’s Hall of Champions, a football-shaped, 100-yard atrium that honors past Texas A&M athletes, and through the Heritage Lounge, where black-and-white photographs and dark-wood décor conjure the city’s past as a railroad stop with a college nearby, there is a sign that cautions, “All-access credentials do not provide access.”
Past the sign is the exclusive inner domain of Kyle Field known as the Founders Club, with two bars, a baby grand piano and a chandelier that drips down three stories. Outside some of the 12 Founders Club suites, which are clustered on two levels on either side of the 50-yard line, are oil paintings of the couples to whom the suites will belong for at least the next 20 years. The rights to the suites were secured with donations of $5 million to $12.5 million, and the suites were then personalized with furnishings and color palettes of their owners’ choosing.
The suites have only been used four times. They were built in the past year as part of the record-setting $485 million renovation of Kyle Field, Texas A&M’s home stadium — in increasingly elaborate forms — since 1927.
Any project that size is a story about money. But at Texas A&M, a member of the powerful Southeastern Conference since 2012, the story of the renovation of Kyle Field is one of a university that found itself with more money than it knew what to do with.
That is not to say the renovation was merely an exercise in gold-plating. Before construction to expand the stadium’s capacity to more than 100,000 began two years ago — the work was done in two offseasons, so the Aggies never had to sacrifice a home game — there were far too few concession stands and restrooms at Kyle Field. Visitors could not circumnavigate the stadium, and some seat-holders in the northern end zone’s upper deck could not see the entire field. Not enough money was set aside for future repairs.
Still, a college football stadium that absorbs nearly half a billion dollars cannot help but symbolize a lot of things, and among them are Texas A&M’s outsize ambitions — the Aggies would desperately like to add to their one Associated Press football national championship, which came in 1939. But perhaps above all, Kyle Field is a manifestation of the arms race that college athletics has become at its highest levels. And in that atmosphere, the price tag was not unusual.
According to SportsBusiness Journal, the costs for planned renovations of Notre Dame Stadium (which includes other facilities, including academic spaces), Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium and Arizona State’s Sun Devil Stadium are all projected to reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
“In this business, in the SEC, if you sit on your hands — this is a very aggressive league, and they’re going to go past you,” Texas A&M athletic director Eric Hyman said.
Asked how long it took for the premium options to sell out — not just the dozen Founders Suites, but Prime Suites and Legacy Suites and an All American Club and several loge boxes — Hyman snapped his fingers. In fact, the stadium is filled this season, even though over the past two years, its capacity increased from 82,600 to 102,733, making it the fourth-largest stadium in college football behind Ohio State’s Ohio Stadium, Penn State’s Beaver Stadium and Michigan Stadium.
Texas A&M had set a goal of raising $125 million in dedicated gifts for the renovation. Yet nearly that amount was raised just by promising 20-year rights to the 12 Founders Club suites. As befits a university in eastern Texas that emphasizes engineering, suite-holders’ fortunes typically derive from natural resources.
Those funds, said Kevin Hurley, the university’s senior associate athletic director for facilities and construction, constituted “the down payment on the building.”
Skip Wagner, the chief executive of the 12th Man Foundation, the nonprofit organization that raises money for the Texas A&M athletic department, said about $220 million was eventually raised through private donations. The rest of the cost was borne through bonds, $20 million in city and local contributions and $74 million in student fees.
This year, a student pass that grants access to seven Aggies football games and various other sports cost $290. They are sold out.
“We love our school, so we were willing to donate the money to the stadium, and with that came the perk of a suite or a seat or whatever,” said Frosty Gilliam Jr., a suite-holder and the chairman-elect of the 12th Man Foundation.
“We exceeded our goals,” Gilliam added, “and that helped us do our upgrades.”
Those included the Hall of Champions as well as 12th Man Studios, which, at a cost of $12 million, consists of ESPN-quality broadcast facilities inside the stadium. The studios allowed Texas A&M to create more content for the SEC Network than any other member of the conference last year.
The new Kyle Field has codified Texas A&M’s status as something akin to the China of college football: a once-dormant giant that is only now discovering and exploiting its full potential. It’s worth recalling how starkly the team — and the university — were put on the map three years ago when quarterback Johnny Manziel led an upset of Alabama, then the defending champion. The arrival of Manziel and coach Kevin Sumlin, and the victories they compiled just as the university entered the SEC, created a perfect storm for Aggies athletics.
“You had Johnny Manziel, you had oil, you had Kevin Sumlin, and you had success in the SEC,” Hyman said. “We all know in life, you work hard to put yourself in a position where luck is a factor. We were very lucky to have oil where it was — $100 a barrel — Johnny Manziel being here and the excitement he created, from a national standpoint.”
Even without Manziel — whose nickname, Johnny Football, quickly became known across the country — the move to the SEC allowed the 12th Man Foundation to credibly approach its donors several years ago with a new, higher bar for annual gifts.
At a university that bills itself as the Home of the 12th Man — the Seattle Seahawks license the phrase from Texas A&M — fans, and their ability to affect the game, are taken seriously. Aggies supporters like to say that they do not cheer, but yell. Texas A&M has no homecoming game; fans are always expected to attend.
So as part of the renovation, the field was dropped 16 feet, and 11 feet was trimmed from each sideline, bringing more fans inside and the closest ones to the field even closer. Canopies were installed above the east and west upper decks, in part to block the sun but also to redirect sound toward the field.
“It is louder — it’s considerably louder,” Sumlin said.
In discussions with architects, Texas A&M’s two main demands were that the revamped stadium be the largest of its kind in Texas and also the largest in the SEC.
“The crescendo of the SEC experience — that drove the idea of going big,” said Earl Santee, the architect at the stadium firm Populous, who was the lead designer of the project.
“It was the most expensive project in college history to date,” he added, “but I think they got a great deal.”
