A peek inside the walls

“On time, on budget.”

That’s the way KU Athletic Director Travis Goff described the status of the renovation project at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium following an hour-long media tour on Friday afternoon. He called that classification, “four words that we are really enjoying continuing to say around here.”

That’s nothing new. Goff has been saying that for weeks — months even — as construction crews continue to work around the clock to make sure the Jayhawks are ready to roll with their 2025 season opener on Aug. 23 against Fresno State at their shiny new stadium.

In reality, it was all the things that Goff, along with KU officials Jason Booker and Brad Nachtigal, said during the tour that grabbed the most attention.

That’s if you could direct your gaze anywhere other than the mind-blowing surroundings that featured five new premium seating areas, suites, club levels, new views and vantage points and an entirely new feel

Here are a few things that stood out to me about Friday's tour.

• First and foremost, we’ve always known that this was going to be a remarkable project of epic proportions that has a chance to redefine Kansas football for generations. The price tag alone and incredible commitment to doing it big and doing it right told us that. But getting a chance to see it up close really made that hit home. This thing is going to be incredible. First-class all the way, with features that Kansas fans really can’t even imagine. Even I’m struggling to visualize them, in their finished glory, and I was just in the place. The finishing touches on things like signage, branding, color scheme, landscaping and carpet/tile/hardware/etc. is still a little ways out. But when that stuff is in there, it’s really going to bring the new spaces to life.

• A couple of numbers that blew my mind: They’re already over 1 million working hours on the entire project, dating back 16 months to the start of the renovations at the Anderson Family Football Complex (Phase 0) and they’re expecting to long another 500,000 hours in the four months between now and the season opener. A lot of that will be detail work. The structure is firmly in place and you don’t have to squint even a little bit to picture what it’s all gonna look like. They’ve had 600 workers on site at a time for a lot of the construction, and they’ve run shifts from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. every day for a long time. They’re working at a breakneck pace to get it done and have been since last December.

• The new video board is MASSIVE. The old one, which was installed 11 years ago, was roughly 2,300 square feet. This one is about 5,280 square feet, so more than twice as big, 20 feet taller and also 60 feet closer to the field than the old one. It has a blue ribbon along the bottom for time, score, etc., that is consistent with the scoreboard looks inside Allen Fieldhouse and Hoglund Ballpark, a really nice touch of integrating all of it together. By far one of the coolest parts of the video board — made by Daktronics — is the potential for KU to show videos on the back side (facing the hill), as well. Think family movie nights, concerts and whatever else you might be able to use something like that for. Pretty cool. The video board will be ready to role for KU’s commencement on May 18. And on the very next day, they’ll bring in the new, custom-designed, state-of-the-art turf that will replace the old stuff that’s been in there taking a beating through the past 6 months of heavy construction.

• One thing that’s great news for Kansas is the fact that they’ve already sold out of their premium seating options for the 2025 season. Those, of course, are the high-dollar seats, and there are roughly 3,000 of them spread throughout 5 premium seating sections. Booker said the premium sections were designed with the idea that there are different types of fans who attend these games, so, some are more conducive for the die-hard football watchers while others make the amenities a little easier to get to and more of a focal point. Either way, all of them are going to be elite.

• It sounds like there’ll be a place for the Jayhawks to honor their successes of the past, with a trophy room of sorts, down a corridor near the main entrance on the west side and close to one of the premium entrances. They’ll have bowl trophies, signage to honor past teams and players and more. That’s long overdue in the actual stadium, and Goff said there will be a storytelling component to the entire thing, from the World War I Memorial (for which the stadium was originally named) to the names of the different levels of seating — Founders Club, Jayhawk Club, Limestone Level, etc.

• Because the east stands are still there, it’s easy to see how much steeper the new west side is than the gradual elevation of the old stadium. That started at ground level, with the first row of seats just 24 inches off the ground in the old place. In the new stadium — on the west side for now and in the entire thing when Phase II is complete — that first row will be 7-8 feet off the ground, making that a row with a much better view of the action than there was before. In many ways, that becomes one of the prime spots in the house. One area that Goff said has really changed, though, is how the spread of the stadium from the north and south has been eliminated. The old bowl used to be so far back there and the south end was open all the way back to the video board. Now, both sides are much closer to the field, which will be moved ever-so-slightly, 5 feet north and 2 feet east, to center it with the new configurations.

• You can tell there’s an enormous amount of pride behind this project, from Goff and his staff — many of whom are native Kansans — to the construction workers and architects who were in charge with executing the vision. One, sent me a photo of his KU helmet on X on Friday night to show that he’s one of the many Jayhawks working on KU’s new football home. Goff said on Friday that honoring the Kansas roots associated with the university and the project was important to everyone, calling this stadium “literally a tangible beacon (that) is making a statement about what excellence is and what excellence can be at KU,” and emphasizing that the whole idea behind that vision “transcends the sport of football.”

“Our commitment to the state is really important and was embedded as a core value from the start,” Goff said.

— For tickets to all KU athletic events, visit kuathletics.com