Sept. 21, 2002

Charleston, SC - Citadel athletic director Les Robinson calls Johnson Hagood Stadium "our front porch, the front porch of the school."

If so, the porch is sagging and needs a paint job.

The Citadel played its first football game at Johnson Hagood Stadium in 1948. It only seems like the military school has been trying to repair, replace or renovate the old stadium on Hagood Avenue ever since.

Over the last five years, Citadel officials have floated a variety of plans for fixing up - or doing away with - the 21,000-seat stadium, which is the oldest in the Southern Conference and increasingly showing its age.

Five years ago, former Citadel athletic director Walt Nadzak pushed for a new multi-use stadium, saying, "This is 1997 and the stadium has served its purpose. Its time has passed. Our public image is at stake."

In 1998, Nadzak commissioned a plan and scale model of a $29 million, 20,000-seat stadium and spoke optimistically of having a new stadium open by 2002. Didn't happen.

"We got a model made, and it's probably still around over there in the football office," said Nadzak, who retired in 2000. "That was the plan, and we tried to finance it with private funds and maybe state revenue bonds. But budgets being what they are in the state, the funds just were not available."

That forced The Citadel to scale back its plans. Last year, school officials floated the idea of selling skyboxes and luxury seats to pay for a $9 million tower on the west side of the stadium, with annual revenue from the boxes enabling the school to borrow money in the form of bonds.

"I have three points to make: 'We are going to build a new stadium. We are going to build a new stadium. We are going to build a new stadium," Citadel president Maj. Gen. John S. Grinalds said last summer.

As The Citadel plays host to Western Carolina today in its 286th game at Johnson Hagood Stadium, Robinson is hard at work on the latest plan to rebuild the stadium.

The goal - raise $10 million in private funds by 2004 to build a tower on the west (home) side of the stadium that would include luxury suites, club seats and a new press box. Revenue from the suites and club seats would go back into the athletic department for scholarships, operating budget and other improvements at the stadium.

"It's a major job, but I think it can be accomplished," said Robinson, the former Bulldogs basketball coach who returned to The Citadel as AD two years ago. "And I think we will accomplish it."

Robinson, who has contacts throughout the country after his decade as basketball coach and then AD at North Carolina State, met with some potential donors three weeks ago when the Bulldogs played at Louisiana State, and will travel to Florida in the next couple of weeks to talk with another. Officials hope for an announcement of a major donation soon.

"It's truly a team project," Robinson said.

"Everyone from Gen. Grinalds on down is working to accomplish this."

Robinson has one advantage that Nadzak did not. His name is Chuck Beddingfield, and he's The Citadel's new associate athletic director for marketing and development.

Beddingfield's salary is paid by The Citadel Foundation, which raises money for the school. But his office is in the athletic department at McAlister Field House, and his top job is raising that $10 million for the stadium.

"Chuck is the point man to put it all together," Robinson said. "Almost every major project of this nature has someone on the fund-raising end of it, and that's what his concentration is every day."

Beddingfield, a 1974 graduate of Appalachian State, is a sports-marketing veteran, having done similar work at Oklahoma State, Iowa State and Mississippi State. His long association with Citadel Foundation director Frank Shannon III, who formerly headed a similar foundation at Mississippi State, led him to The Citadel.

"I think this is a very smart way to go about this," said Beddingfield.

"Many athletic programs around the country use the sale of suites and club seats to finance the debt on a new facility. The smart thing to do is to raise private dollars to build, and allow the revenue from that to feed our scholarship and athletic programs."

Beddingfield hopes to have $5 million raised by January 2004, with the other $5 million banked by November of that year. "Naming opportunities" are available, he said. Best-case scenario, construction starts after the '04 season.

Citadel officials envision a smaller version of typical big-time I-A stadiums, which on average have 65 luxury suites going for about $35,600 each per season, and 1,580 club-level seats. The Citadel's tower would have about 20 suites and 350 to 400 club seats. A suite might go for $20,000 or so per season, he said.

Some residents near the stadium have expressed concerns about the impact on their neighborhood, but Robinson said the school has worked to satisfy those concerns.

Much has been accomplished already.

The $3 million Altman Athletic Center, housing locker rooms and meeting facilities at the stadium, opened last year. The $3.5 million Holliday Alumni Center across the street from the stadium opened two years ago.

Those new facilities only heighten the contrast with the aging stadium.

Paint is peeling, rust is showing, and some seats on the east (visitors') side are a splinter hazard. The brick facade of the stadium was removed a few years ago for safety reasons.

The stadium is safe now, officials say, but some in the football program would like to see better care taken of what is already there. Most recently, the school has expanded women's restrooms and done maintenance and touch-up work, but "nothing major," Robinson said.

"The main point is, it's more than a football stadium," Robinson said. "It's a place where Citadel alumni take great pride in coming to events like homecoming, much more than at other schools. It's our front porch."