Todd Graham was tasked with a nearly impossible challenge when he was hired as Arizona State’s football coach in 2012: Ignite a dormant donor base.
When he walked into the ASU football facility on his first day on the job, he found carpet that had been laid 14 years earlier and an entire facility that was badly outdated.
“I went like, ‘Wow!’ I was shocked at how poor of a teaching facility we had,” Graham told Cronkite News. “We were behind just in video, just in teaching. Nutritionally, we were probably dead last (in the Pac-12). Budget-wise, dead last.
“People wondered why (the Sun Devils) weren’t winning. There was just no investment.”
Graham set out to engage boosters and spearhead an effort to upgrade the facilities, but even he couldn’t imagine at the time where it would lead. With input from some new boosters and greater commitment from some previous donors, ASU is turning Sun Devil Stadium into more than a renovation project.
The brainchild of Jack Furst, a successful private-equity investor, ASU 365 Community Union will transform the stadium into a place that students, faculty, staff and the community can utilize year around and feature a wide range of options, from movies to farmer’s markets to cardio classes.
“I said, ‘Look, this is crazy.’ There’s no sense to refurbish a stadium when we ought to reinvent it,” Furst said. “It ought to be a place where we get together 365 days a year instead of (for) eight football games.
“If we’re going to spend $300 million, wouldn’t you rather spend $300 million and utilize it every day of the year rather than eight evenings a year?”
When Graham came aboard, there was a disconnect between boosters and the football program, in part due to off-field issues and a poor academic record.
In 2011, the year before Graham took over, the Sun Devil football team had a 2.2 team grade point average and was creeping close to losing scholarships because of the team’s poor Academic Progress Rate, according to Sun Devil Source’s Chris Karpman. Many boosters were reluctant to give money to a program that had countless academic and discipline problems.
Graham had to instill a new culture in Tempe and sell supporters on it, too. Graham said activating donors begins with building relationships.
So Graham made his program transparent to those who wanted to help. He gave boosters unprecedented access. Most were regulars at practice. Some gave talks to the team. Graham even gave a few of them headsets that they could wear on the sidelines during games, so they could listen in to exchanges like those between Graham and then-ASU quarterback Taylor Kelly.
“Our donors saw what type of young men we were developing and how we were building them and teaching them to live a championship life,” Graham said. “I think that’s what activated them. I had nothing to hide – I was so proud of the young men and what we were accomplishing.”
Graham needed to an infusion of donors quickly so that ASU could begin the task of making Sun Devil Stadium a state-of-the-art facility again. When the construction got underway in April of 2014, ASU estimated a price tag of $225 million for the project, according to azcentral.
But Graham wanted more.
Even with cranes and bulldozers working in and around Sun Devil Stadium, the project still didn’t include what Graham wanted and needed most: a new student-athlete facility.
About five months later, the Arizona Board of Regents approved a $256-million renovation plan that included funds for a Graham’s dream student-athlete facility. The plan called for a fund-raising effort to supply $85 million toward the project, according to azcentral.com.
Graham’s vision energized Arizona State’s boosters, including Furst.
A Furst vision
Graham was introduced to Furst by Tom Gardner, one of Arizona State’s Sun Angel-level members of the Sun Devil Club (donors who provide gifts of more than $50,000 to the university).
Graham invited Furst, founder of Oak Stream Investors, to ASU’s 2013 game against Notre Dame at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
“I think it was not until a year later with him just being around the program – I invited him in. I opened the doors,” Graham added.
Graham said he did that for many significant donors including Bill Kent, Joe Cosgrove, Steve Butterfield — who passed away in April — and others.
“I fell in love with what he was doing with our players in terms of what we were doing in the classroom, how competitive we were in the classroom,” said Furst, who added that he liked Graham’s philosophy about college football “being part of a community and being a good citizen.”
Furst became involved with the Sun Devil Stadium renovation, but his vision for the project went far beyond what was initially laid out. He wanted to see the stadium transform into a “community union” instead of just a football stadium.
In Feb. 2014, before construction had begun on the stadium, Furst met with Vice President for University Athletics Ray Anderson, ASU President Michael Crow and the CEO of ASU Enterprise Partners. R.F. “Rick” Shangraw Jr. in Anderson’s office. Furst called it a “good collaborative listening effort.”
“I think it was a very receptive room when we started the dialogue,” Furst said. “It was refreshing and everyone took a step back and said, “this isn’t crazy, but we’re going to have to rethink the way we run our institution. We’re going to have to rethink the way we manage this asset.’ ”
Fed up with the 14-year-old carpet and seeing his players taking ice baths in horse troughs, Graham wasn’t shooting for the stars yet. He just wanted a first-class student-athlete facility. But Furst saw an opportunity to do something revolutionary.
“Jack was kind of talking about this community center and his vision for 365,” Graham said. “And I was kind of like, ‘Hey man, I just want to get us to par.’ ”
“And we said, you know what? We’re Arizona State. We can do both,” Furst added. “And that’s what we did.”
Graham said the Sun Devil Stadium fundraising effort produced donations that Arizona State had never seen before, including six donors giving over $10 million and three giving over $15 million.
Furst was the spark plug for a lot of the giving, helping ignite excitement and generate donations with his passion for the project.
“I think what gives Jack – and Debra, his lovely wife – joy in giving back is that they can help lead their colleagues and friends in this kind of effort,” Anderson said in a video honoring Furst with ASU’s 2017 Philanthropist of the Year Award.
Graham had gained a financial commitment from the donors but, in a bit of a role-reversal, they wanted one from him. After bolting to Tempe from Pittsburgh following just a one-year stint in the Steel City, the donors wanted to make sure the Graham wouldn’t do the same to them.
They wanted Graham to get financially involved in the project. So he did. He and his wife Penni committed $500,000 to the project — a donation that was matched by Anderson shortly after, according to azcentral.
Graham embraced Furst’s vision. Unlike most coaches, he wasn’t concerned with people messing up the field or hanging around the Devils’ facilities. He said he understood the advantages 365 would bring to the Sun Devil community, as well as the leg up it would give ASU in recruiting.
Graham said he knew that when he brought recruits to the ASU campus, they were going to see a state-of-the-art stadium complex incorporated into the community that would be different from anything in the Pac-12 or around the country.
“And then it just started building from there,” he said.
Implementing the vision
Isaac Manning, the manager of the Sun Devil Stadium renovation project, said that for the a 365 team has been working for the last three years with ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts on ideas for the project and how to implement them.
Each year the Herberger Institute holds a Cluster Project — a competition that allows students to collaborate to solve real-world design projects. ASU 365 is one of the projects, and Manning and Furst told the students that they will eventually benefit from the project they’ve designed.
According to Manning, Furst asked them, “how many of of you guys have been to a football game?”
“About half the hands went up,” Manning said. “And (Jack) said, ‘See, there’s our problem.’ ”
Victor Hamburger, general manager of the 365 Community Union, said that Furst’s plan made a lot of people wonder why the stadium wasn’t already being used for more than just football games and other events.
The project, though, would require a change in how the facility is managed. Instead of trying to implement all of their ideas at one time, Furst said that Crow came up with the term “Lego into it,” a reference to the plastic building blocks.
“We’ll get started and if it’s real successful, we’ll do the next piece, and (then) the next piece to manage the risk of (whether we) can we operate a community union that’s open 365 days a year,” Furst said. “We can literally stage our way into ultimate success.”
And they have.
Furst is anxious for the project to “move away from bricks and mortar” and get to the point where planning begins on all the possible activities that can take place at the stadium. Hamburger says the project will begin pilot events in fall 2019.
Logistics
Furst’s imagination was on display as he described amenities and content the stadium he envisions when the 365 project is finished. His ideas flow nonstop — as if he is giving a tour through the product 10 years after its completion.
He foresees digital expression walls that show what goes on at ASU “all the time,” bands in every corner of the building, a giant Starbucks with WiFi, outdoor movies at the “best outdoor movie theater in the world,” concerts, runners jogging around the main concourse and a freshman 101 class outside that uses the stadium’s giant video board to introduce students “to all things ASU.”
“We’re only limited by our creativity and imagination,” Furst said.
Hamburger said the pilot events will include small concerts on the field, business and corporate events — such as cocktail mixers and receptions — on the stadium’s upper concourse and yoga events on a sun deck.
The stadium’s amenities are meant for yearlong use. As part of a budget that has ballooned to $307 million and was approved in September of 2017, an indoor fourth-level for corporate and student activities was added to the construction plans, according to azcentral.
The 365 Community Union has brought the entire university together in a ways that only orientation and graduation have in the past. Sun Devil Stadium can be thought of like an amusement park — every area and corner has a new activity, a new ride that people are clamoring to try.
Only with this project, every group in the university gets the chance to create their ride. Manning said that Crow thinks about the 365 Community Union as a lab space, one that could be used as a sociology lab or a crowd control lab.
“Now, when you go and talk to the deans of the the 16 colleges,” Manning said, “They are all going, ‘Well, this is pretty interesting. We’d love to have access to the building and start doing things.”
Added Anderson: “(He) wants the reinvention of this stadium. (He) wants this venue to belong to all of ASU, all of the community, for purposes way beyond just seven or eight football games a year.”
Manning said that because the building is “vertically segregated,” it allows for a plethora of multi-functional spaces. They can operate a dinner event on the 300-level of the east sideline for over 500 people while others are walking along the main concourse.
The manager of the Sun Devil Stadium renovation project wants it to become a porous part of ASU’s campus. He said he was part of a group that designed the Dallas Mavericks’ basketball arena — American Airlines Arena — and they were never able to draw a security line that would allow for accessible restaurants inside the stadium.
Sun Devil Stadium, though, will be open from around 6 or 7 A.M. to 11 or 12 at night, and for security, Manning wants the building “fully-loaded” with people at all times.
“People don’t like to go places where there aren’t people,” he said. “You feel safe at the (Memorial Union) all the time because there’s always someone running around that building all hours of the day and night.”
Furst, Manning and Hamburger were not egocentric about their ideas. The trio understands that they’ve only scratched the surface of the creative ways to use the facility. The consumers and visitors will dictate what the group expands upon and ultimately adds.
“We don’t know where it ends,” Hamburger said.
Story by JORDAN KAYE, Cronkite News
