SMU kick-starts Ford Stadium expansion after alumnus ponies up $50 million

SMU was shut out of the latest wave of conference realignment. Now the university is set to add a major résumé builder for whenever the next round of realignment happens.

On Friday, SMU will announce plans to build a $100 million, three-tiered end zone complex on the south side of Ford Stadium. The project was kick-started thanks to a $50 million donation from 1958 alumnus Garry Weber’s foundation. Weber’s gift, a part of the university’s $1.5 billion campaign “SMU Ignited: Boldly Shaping Tomorrow,” will mark the largest athletic department donation in school history.

“Facilities are the visible, tangible sign of commitment,” SMU athletic director Rick Hart said in a phone interview with The Dallas Morning News on Thursday. “You can touch them, feel them and see them. And when w e say we want to compete at the highest level, we don’t know what that means — nobody does; there’s a lot of change going on in Division I athletics — but in order to do that, you’ve got to continue to invest.”

The Garry Weber End Zone Complex will be SMU’s latest athletic investment. Since 2013, the school has committed over a quarter billion dollars to athletics projects, including the Armstrong Fieldhouse — an indoor performance center by Ford Stadium — and the Washburne Soccer and Track Stadium, which is set to open this spring.

The 192,500-square foot end zone complex will not only be an upgrade to SMU’s facilities, but also an “expansion and modernization of Ford Stadium,” as Hart called it. It’ll be the home to new locker rooms, weight rooms, position-specific meeting rooms and auditorium for the football program, as well as a full kitchen and training table for all the school’s athletes. The hill that’s become so synonymous with students and kids sliding down will be reduced with the new project, if not eliminated. That hasn’t been determined, but SMU President R. Gerald Turner told The News he’s confident the new facilities will be to the students’ liking.

Additionally, the project is expected to increase Ford Stadium’s capacity, which currently sits at 32,000, though the details of that increase won’t be known until the design process is completed.

The project will also keep SMU in the college football facilities arms race. For perspective, Cincinnati — bound for the Big 12 and fresh off a College Football Playoff appearance — had an expansion to its football stadium in 2015 that cost $86 million and raised capacity to over 40,000. Nearby rival TCU also recently unveiled a new Legends Clubs and Suites expansion at Amon G. Carter Stadium that had a price tag of $113 million.

Turner said there isn’t a target date for when SMU will break ground on the end zone complex, but he hopes to have the rest of the funds raised by the end of 2022.

“We still have some significant fundraising to go, but in a big project like this, if you don’t have somebody do at least half of it, it’s almost impossible to get it done,” Turner said. “You can’t raise $100 million dollars a million at a time. You’ve got to have a major gift that makes people believe.”

Turner, the university president since 1995, said a south end zone expansion project is something the university has thought of since Ford Stadium opened in 2000. The stadium, with its open end and signature hill, always offered expansion potential and the ability to connect the east and west sides when it was deemed necessary. That time, according to Turner, is now. And that’s for a couple reasons.

The SMU football program is on its best run since the death penalty, appearing — but not finishing — in the AP Top 25 for three consecutive seasons. The program’s facilities, SMU leadership believes, should reflect that upward momentum.

“Our donors power our future,” new SMU head football coach Rhett Lashlee said in a statement provided by the university. “With Garry Weber’s gift, we enter an exciting new era of Mustang football. I am incredibly excited about what this means for our team and the university.”

Additionally, as the last couple years of college athletics have shown, the landscape is changing. In 2016, SMU expressed interest in joining the Big 12 Conference. That didn’t happen. Five years later, the Big 12 added four new schools, including three American Athletic Conference rivals of SMU: BYU from the Mountain West Conference, and Cincinnati, Houston and UCF from the AAC.

“It’s really hard to know what that’s going to be,” Turner said of the college landscape. “We’ve tried to couch this by saying [the end zone project] is a very important component for us to stay competitive and successful in Division I athletics. And if realignment works out of that, fine, if not — if it stays like it is — we want to be competitive in whatever conference we’re in, and a facility like this requires it.”

And that facility wouldn’t be within grasp without one of SMU football’s own. Weber was an honorable mention All-American member of the 1957 Mustangs. He grew up in Texas watching Doak Walker, and he couldn’t see himself playing for any other school than SMU. Doing so, he said, opened doors for what would turn into a very successful business career, ultimately leading to his own investment firm, Weber Financial Inc. He also served as a Dallas City Council member, Dallas County Judge and a member of SMU’s Board of Trustees.

Weber said he’s been making plans for his foundation to contribute $50 million to the end zone project for about a year now.

“We really need this facility,” Weber said, “because it’ll attract better athletes. As soon as I heard about it, that we were going to have it, I gave a lot of thought to it, and I wanted to do it. They gave me the right of first refusal and I took it.”

For Weber, the project is also a chance to see, firsthand, a major transformation for the SMU football program. When he was at SMU, he played in the Cotton Bowl. In the near future, the Mustangs will be playing in a stadium on campus with facilities that have his name on it.

“I learned early if you want to give money, you ought to do the best you can when you’re alive and see the progress,” Weber said with a slight chuckle.

Speaking of progress, Weber said the last few years of SMU football have been very satisfying.

“In order to be back, it’s all about being competitive,” he said.

SMU hopes the Garry Weber End Zone Complex can do just that, both on the field and in an ever-changing college landscape.

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