Rick Hart opens up on SMU facility projects, ticket sales

SMU athletic director Rick Hart spoke about the ongoing facility projects on campus, ticket sales and how the school is approaching coaching contracts with the ACC move.

Q: The Garry Weber End Zone Complex has risen out of the ground pretty quickly and is looking like one of those best facilities you could put together across college football. What has been the planning process on that like and is it finalized from what everything is going to look like on the interior and once they start putting up walls and things like that? Where is the process that with that facility overall?

RH: “It’s magnificent. To your point, the standard that we went into that project with was the best. Liz and Bill Armstrong took a group of us around, I think two or three summers ago. We were able to look at at that time what were considered to be some of the best end zone complexes in the country. Then really ask the question, what are the best features? Then if you had to do it over again, what are some things that maybe you would have done differently?

“So, we were able to take those lessons and conversations and put together what we feel in partnership with our facility friends and the architects and our partners, what we feel is going to be the best facility in the country from a football perspective. In addition to that, the way it’s going to enhance the game day experience. We’ve been sold out of premium seating, that’s where the need is. 

“This will differentiate our seating even further as we did when we redid Moody Coliseum. From a football operations perspective, from a nutritional perspective across all of our sports and our ability to fuel in the new training table, as well as on game days, how we’ll be able to meet the needs of our fans, in particular, again, in the premium areas is going to be greatly enhanced. Then we’ll come back into the Loyd All-Sports Center and reprogram that space for existing needs to include, as you alluded to earlier, the anticipation of expansion of some of the staff and support services as we head into the ACC.”

Q: The concessions projects that you guys put into play over the summer, the feedback’s been unreal on those. Was that one of those things that was kind of sped up because of that TCU game? Did you use kind of a similar model of going around and seeing some of the different things people are doing with concessions and things like that to kind of drive that?

RH: “I think the concessions piece is one of those situations that’s more complex and nuanced than is understood, which is fine. What I mean by that in response to your question is, not to revisit, but just to restate, you hated to go through it in the moment, but we needed to be pressure tested in a way that we hadn’t been pressure tested and when that happened it exposes some weaknesses. 

“Those weaknesses range from limitations in the facility in terms of 25 years ago, concourses were built differently and how you queued lines and so on so forth, to technology, to how we provided that service and how we leveraged everything available to us to do that. So, you know we have a national concessionaire in Aramark, who has access to best practices and who does this across the country and so in addition to some of the things that we, SMU and athletics needed to address from an infrastructure perspective challenged them to bring us a plan that would align with, again, the uniqueness of Ford Stadium, but yet accomplish our goals. It was a good effort, and we’re grateful and pleased with the plan that they’ve developed.

“As you said, feedback’s been positive, and I anticipate that that will continue. Now we’re implementing many of those changes in Moody as well. I think we’re where we need to be, but again, it’s never finished like anything else. We’ll continue to evaluate and evolve, but the Weber End Zone project will help. We’ll have a full-service kitchen for the first time ever in Ford Stadium, which is gonna help with quality and delivery and all those kinds of things. We feel, again, good about where we are and think that we have a model now that’ll serve everybody well.”

Q: With Moody and the move to the ACC, can you kind of shed some light on ticket sales for basketball in particular and the excitement around that piece too?

RH: “Absolutely. I may add a little context because sometimes when you start throwing numbers out, I don’t know, somebody may be impressed with them, somebody else may be underwhelmed, but within the first week of the announcement that we were going to the ACC next year we moved over a thousand new season tickets across football and men’s basketball. Over $250K of donations attached to those tickets. If you start to talk about percentages at basketball, I think it was like 30 percent uptick in terms of season tickets. It was a positive pop.

“We viewed it very positively because you also have to consider that those schedules and those seasons don’t start until the next cycle. So, for people to respond that way a year out, and some of them probably strategically to, quote, get in line and secure their place because you know I anticipate and expect that as we roll into the 2024 and 2025 cycles, which will occur after the calendar year when we get into renewals and and all those types of things that I expect that tickets will be very hard to get and I expect that Moody Coliseum will be sold out and and one of the toughest tickets in Dallas as it was five, six, seven years ago.” 

Q: The football side of it with the Weber End Zone Complex, what has the response been like to that facility so far from SMU supporters? 

RH: “It was a little serendipitous, but our plan, our on-sale for deposits for the new premium seats in the Weber EndZone complex. I think launched the Monday after the ACC announcement or something like that. That was already set up, but again good timing, so the momentum carried right into that. I know again in the first week there were over, I think there were like 108 deposits. Those are still open. The process there is people can go in because we have different seat types. 

“As you said, the suites are sold out, but we’ve got traditional club. We’ve got these things called living room suites. We’ve got tabletop seats. We’ve got some standing room areas that are kind of like just big bar areas that’s more intended to be social. So a lot of different seat types. So you can make your deposit now. It’s a refundable deposit, but that’ll give us a sense for what the demand is and for the different areas. Then we’ll work with account holders and patrons to go back and place people in seats as we approach the spring. So that process is underway and we’re accepting deposits for those seats now.”

Q: Do you have to address basically every contract to kind of put it in line with the power conference going rate is on certain things for SMU coaches? 

RH: “I mean, so much of this, I know I sound like a broken record, but is going to be we need to make sure we’re communicating clearly and regularly, and we need to make sure that we’re being honest, transparent, realistic, and that the decisions we make are data-driven and understood as they’re clarified. The reason I put all that forward as kind of a preamble is, again, yes, we are moving into a different neighborhood.

“Scope and scale will change. We want and need to be competitive, and that runs the gamut in terms of how you define that and the investments you need to make in order to accomplish it. At the same time, we can’t commit resources we don’t have. 

“Our goal is to identify what that looks like probably both at a base level and an aspirational level and then we’ll get there on a timeline that aligns with resource development. We will need to be strategic and there may be some things we want to do, again, that that we don’t get to in Year 1 and we’re going to have to figure out what really moves the needle as it relates to how we allocate and invest those resources. I have no doubt that some of those top priorities will be staff and compensation, but this also isn’t an exercise in bloat. 

“It’s not an exercise where everybody kind of participates just because. We would do this if the money was coming from the conference. But in particular, when you’ve got individuals who are investing, then we have a great responsibility to not just the institution, which we always have, but to those individuals that we’re investing and allocating those resources in a way that, again, moves us towards our vision and our goals. So there will be a lot of transparency around it, and it will be very strategic.”

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