NC State raising new athletics funds for C-F Scoreboard

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RALEIGH – Quietly, North Carolina State University is raising as much as $6 million from private donors for improvements to athletic facilities including the school’s football stadium.

“We will be purchasing a new scoreboard for Carter Finley that will be a significant improvement,” writes N.C. State’s athletics director, Debbie Yow, in an e-mail about her plans for the coming year. “Our focus for the Spring will be the pursuit of private funding for a number of modest yet valuable facility improvements …”

Senior Associate Athletics Director Chris Kingston, who is working on the scoreboard project, said through a university spokesman that the project is one of many planned facility enhancements. And the money for those most of improvements will have to come from private donors.

The football stadium’s current scoreboard has been in use since 2001. It was part of a massive, multi-year makeover for the stadium that included adding seats, building a new press box and luxury suites and constructing a football operations center.

Mark Steinkamp, a senior marketing director at Brookings, S.D.-based scoreboard provider Daktronics, says in an e-mail that large college football scoreboards can cost as much as several million dollars. Schools typically will replace them every seven to 10 years as new control and display technologies come along, he adds.

Bobby Purcell, executive director of the Wolfpack Club booster organization, says that NCSU’s plans call for replacing the video screen part of the scoreboard, not the entire scoreboard. “There’s a lot better technology now,” he says in explaining the need for the upgrade.

Replacing only the screen panel would save NCSU money. Experts in the semiconductor industry versed with light emitting diode technology estimate such a replacement would cost between $500,000 and $1 million. That same upgrade would have cost more than $2 million just a couple years ago, but LED prices have fallen dramatically since then.

One booster the university might consider targeting for help with such a project is Neal Hunter, who co-founded the Durham-based LED company Cree Inc. Hunter says that he has heard about the university trying to upgrade its football scoreboard before next season, but no one from the school has approached him officially to talk about it. “I would love to see Cree’s LED in that scoreboard,” he says.

So what about the fundraising for other facility improvements that Yow alludes to in her e-mail? Purcell says that he is working on two projects.

The first, which is almost complete, is raising a half million dollars to upgrade the Casey Natatorium, where the school’s swimming teams compete. The Wolfpack Club also is trying to raise another $2.5 million, which is needed to complete the clubhouse at the school’s golf course. NCSU booster Lonnie Poole already has donated half of the amount needed for that $5 million project. Last week, Poole announced a gift of $40 million to the business school of the university, the single-largest gift by an individual in NCSU’s history.

But for the athletics department, the current list of projects may just be the beginning as Yow plans for the long term. Local real estate veteran Steve Stroud, a well-known NCSU booster, says, “Our soccer facilities are far behind the other major soccer programs in the ACC.” He adds that the tennis facilities and the baseball stadium are among the venues that also need improvements.

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38 Responses to NC State raising new athletics funds for C-F Scoreboard

  1. elvislives 02/01/2011 at 7:22 PM #

    $10 million for Clemson’s new indoor practice facility. I’d vote that it would be more wise to allocate money towards a multi-sport indoor practice facility and lean on the alumni to “donate” a new scoreboard in the future.

    http://www.statefansnationforums.com/topic.php?id=3981

  2. 61Packer 02/01/2011 at 8:04 PM #

    Clarksa, I had my seats on the 10 (north end) long before the scoreboard came to be. The whole lower level west side of the stadium gets blasted away by the endless noise.

    And to ncsu1, there’s no way anybody inside CFS would have to strain to hear anything. Distortion and volume are two different things.

    I’ve been to several games recently in the Big House, and although they have giant scoreboards above each end of the stadium, they don’t belt out the endless noise like in CFS. The crowd provides sufficient noise. And with the UM band audible the entire game, playing Hail To The Victors, that is most definitely a better football atomosphere than listening to hip-hop and Rednex’s Where Did You Come From, Where Did You Go all afternoon.

  3. wolfpack15 02/02/2011 at 2:41 AM #

    SO, SO, SO Damn tired of hearing about people complain about how loud the music is. It’s 2011 now….keep up with the times. It’s about creating an AWESOME environment that keeps you pumped up. When i say pumped up i mean #1 the players. They are the ones playing the game and thats what kids like these days. #2 you better have an environment that competes with other programs if you want good recruits to come. you may not like the music but i promise they do. By the way its FOOTBALL not golf. if you dont like it loud stay home and watch it on tv or listen to it on the radio. I know you say well you got to have fans there to make money and blah blah blah. Bottom line is if their winning you will be there. Keep it loud and keep the players excited!

  4. wolfpack15 02/02/2011 at 2:47 AM #

    Does anyone know Michigans record this past year? Maybe they need to change their environment too! And if i recall App State won there. Must not be too intimidating.

  5. lsutton5144 02/02/2011 at 8:40 AM #

    Wolfpack15,
    If you are tired of hearing people complain about how loud the music is, maybe you should be the one deciding to stay home. If a kid goes to any school because of the music they play over the PA, then that program has some real issues that need to be dealt with. Football survived for many years without the PA system blaring and distorting everything, and I would venture to say that it could do so now. Maybe that’s why CF is never full until kickoff or after.

  6. OldEnough 02/02/2011 at 12:53 PM #

    I sure hope we aren’t we paying Gale Force to provide the audio.

  7. wolfpack15 02/02/2011 at 2:05 PM #

    Isutton5144,
    Where i sit nobody complains about how loud the music is. We’re all excited that there is music playing and that there is a effort to make CFS a better atmosphere. I have first hand experience in those kids shoes and if you think that music doesn’t add to the atmosphere then your sadly mistaken. You look around that field before the game and during timeouts and before the ball is kicked off and see how many players you see jumping around. The cheer of the fans and the music make that happen. For a player there is a certain state of mind that you go in and the atmosphere along with music helps you find those so called chill bumps. By the way….No 18 year kid cares about how football was in the past or about tradition or about how football survived in the past. Join us here in 2011, getting the recruits are about being able to sell the now and whats going to happen in the future. They want to know there playing chance, what the facilities are like, whats the game day environment like, how many times they are going to be on tv and who are your uniforms by. Sorry to say it but the past is gone and time isnt going back to get you. You can either accept the generation gap and come catch up with us or live in the past and be pissed off.

    Now….with that being said, yes the sound system sucks! bottom line! All the sound doesn’t need to be coming out of the scoreboard. The sound needs to be evenly distributed through speakers all over the stadium. Again, that would help with environment but to say that the music doesnt need to happen is crazy. The band doesn’t get it done for an 18 year old kid.

  8. lsutton5144 02/02/2011 at 4:04 PM #

    Question – if it takes that type of “music” to get players excited, then how do high school teams get excited? I’ve not heard any of that going on at high school games.
    Case closed.

  9. VaWolf82 02/03/2011 at 9:20 AM #

    Friendly Reminder

    This is not a monkey board. If you want to post here, make sure that what you say actually adds value to the topic at hand. Childish back and forth rants will be deleted and possibly more.

  10. lsutton5144 02/03/2011 at 9:43 AM #

    VaWolf82,
    Thanks and I completely understand. I think you’ll also see that I didn’t start this disagreement, and I’m certainly not the one threatening someone. I’m done with it.

  11. triadwolf 02/03/2011 at 2:31 PM #

    Just saw where the GB Packers are practicing at a high school indoor practice facility. Surely NCSU can afford one if a freaking high school in Texas can… Although there are probably some high schools in Texas that have a bigger football budget than we do.

  12. elvislives 02/04/2011 at 1:15 PM #

    Triad, here’s a link to an even more extravagant Texas high school football facility in the making. Lay off teachers but build football stadiums, unreal.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/sports/30allen.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=sports&src=me

  13. triadwolf 02/05/2011 at 12:05 AM #

    ^ Saw that earlier today; truly amazing. The worst part is that they’ll still be only the 4th largest.

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