OXFORD | There’s never a completion date in today’s world of college athletics.
Each Southeastern Conference school constantly searches for ways to improve facilities and amenities, laying out fundraising plans and expansions as soon as, or before, others are complete.
For Ole Miss, that’s recently meant the successful Forward Together campaign that gave birth to the Pavilion at Ole Miss and the ongoing construction and expansion at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.
Those projects are the joint flagship efforts of the campaign, but baseball is also getting another facelift, as Oxford-University Stadium will see considerable changes in an effort to be complete for the 2018 season.
Only seven years after a baseball stadium expansion that totaled close to $20 million and gave the Rebels one of the nicest structures in the country, Ole Miss has announced a $13 million project that will include a a performance center which will include a new locker room, weight room, expanded hitting and pitching area, training room, meeting room, and roof top plaza.
New coaches’ areas and field-level club seats are also planned, as is an improvement to the left field terrace.
Arguments can be made both ways regarding the need for major baseball enhancements, but the improved bowels of the stadium are the obvious choice for improvement. While everything fans see in the stadium is first class, the current home locker room is well behind other SEC stadiums’ player quarters — including the top tier stadiums in the league and several others with far less seats and fan amenities.
Baseball may be non-revenue is almost all the schools in the nation, but the league is throwing money at it, so the importance is evident. Since Ole Miss began its renovation fewer than 10 years ago, 10 SEC schools have completed or announced improvements of at least $10 million each.
That includes an impressive new stadium at Alabama which opens this week and MSU’s planned $40 million investment in Dudy Noble Field. Kentucky, which has a very poor facility compared to most SEC schools, has set aside $4 million to design and begin construction on a new stadium that’s expected to seat 4,500 and be completed in two years. That’ll still be in the bottom half of the league in capacity.
In the most recent athletics department annual revenue report, Ole Miss baseball brought in $3,459,974 and spent $4,868,483 on the program. That includes Ole Miss maintaining head coach Mike Bianco's compensation at or near the top of the country. In that same report for 2015, Bianco's total compensation is listed at $915,995.
Ole Miss presented its plan to former letterwinners in November and hoped $5 million of the money necessary would come from former players. Money from premium seating was not part of the presented plan to pay for the expansion.
Swayze Field is already an impressive environment, and this plan should improve the day-to-day for players and members of the program — as well as offer new seating opportunities. The SEC continues to raise the level in all sports, and that includes baseball.
Ole Miss’ plan is to stay ahead of the pace.
