STILLWATER, Okla. — If you cut T. Boone Pickens with one of the stainless steel carving knives in his $100,000 suite, he’d bleed orange and black. And he has the cowboy accent to prove his love for his Oklahoma State Cowboys.
Yet for years, every time he went through campus, he reacted to the football stadium as if it was the Stillwater sewage center. He wouldn’t hold his nose, but he wouldn’t look, either.
“It looked like an old high school stadium,” Pickens said, standing outside his suite that costs $1 million over 10 years. “I wouldn’t drive past it. I’d drive two blocks away.”
Today, it’s the prettiest building on campus. By next season, it will be arguably the best college football facility in the nation. Thanks to Pickens’ gargantuan $228 million donation, Colorado’s 11th-ranked opponent Saturday will soon be in first place in the arms race that is college football’s facilities war.
“We view it as essential rather than a luxury,” OSU athletic director Mike Holder said.
Not a luxury? You wonder if Holder has taken a tour.
The day before the Cowboys’ 59-17 win over Iowa State on Nov. 1, a guided tour provided a peek at a stadium that is more palace than football facility. The Rustoleum, the pet name Oklahoma and OSU fans alike had for old Lewis Field, is no more.
The facade, with the same Georgian architecture and round windows featured on the rest of campus, was finished in 2006, as were the suites on the north, south and east sides. But it’s inside the bowels of the stadium where, ahem, Boone Pickens Stadium shines.
Due for completion this spring, the amenities are mind-numbing for a college program. The sports medicine area alone is 8,000 square feet and features four hydro pools, three of which can go from 55 degrees during August two-a-days to therapy temperature in four hours.
One pool has a treadmill on which a player can be lowered to whatever buoyancy he needs to rehab joints.
The weight room is 20,000 square feet and has a four-lane, 40-yard track and $850,000 of equipment, twice as much as the current weight room, which the football team shares with the rest of the athletic department.
A 200-person theater with leather seats will host Friday night movies for the team during the season, and two smaller theater rooms will be used as offensive and defensive meeting rooms.
“We hadn’t done anything with football facilities in over 60 years,” said architect David Reed, a 1994 OSU grad. “So we had a blank canvas.”
Suites — in small, medium, large and mega sizes — fill two levels on all sides of the stadium. The 130 suites are more than any college stadium in the nation.
Suites range from the $60,000-a-year models for a five-year commitment to Pickens’ $1 million showcases, not counting two megasuites that seat 75 people for a price to be determined. When all are sold, the revenues for the athletic department will total approximately $6.5 million a year, according to Craig Clemons, associate athletic director for development. That doesn’t include the 3,200 club seats at $2,000 each for roughly $6 million more.
“Facilities never beat anyone,” Holder said. “It’s athletes and coaches who produce victories. To attract both, coaches and athletes, we need to show a commitment to excellence, a commitment to be competitive.”
That’s where the 80-year-old Pickens comes in. A 1951 OSU graduate, the oil and gas magnate gave a record $165 million donation in 2006. Why did he wait so long?
“I got rich,” he said. “I just wrote a book. I said the first billion was the hardest. But I wasn’t a billionaire until after I was 70 years old. And I’m in a rush to do things.”
Last month he announced he’d give another $63 million to complete the project despite losing an estimated $1 billion during the current national economic crisis. The school’s grand vision, which includes an athletic village featuring a new baseball stadium and track facility, had an estimated cost of $420 million.
Pickens reacted to his recent losses as if he misplaced his wallet.
“Oh, I’ve been there before,” he said. “This isn’t my first rodeo. We lost a lot of money, but I’ve lived from one comeback to another.”
The obvious question is, how much is too much? OSU still has rundown classrooms and, if Pickens can essentially write a check and change the vision of the entire football program, would he do the same with personnel? And has he?
Mike Gundy is head coach and reaching icon status. Then again, Oklahoma State is 8-2.
“Why would I?” said Pickens, who also gave $100 million to OSU academics. “I want a team feeling. If they’re going to make a change, I’m sure they would include me in the conversation, but I wouldn’t make the decision. I’ve got too much to do.”
