When the television cameras pan around the US’s newest sporting temple to show the cavernous stands, elegant brick exterior, VIP suites and massive video board, viewers might believe they are looking at a professional venue.

Yet the occupants of Phillip Beard Stadium, the Buford Wolves, are not a professional team or even a college one. They are high-schoolers. In the exorbitant world of high school football, Buford’s $62m, 10,000-capacity arena is not the biggest or most expensive taxpayer-funded student stadium in the US. But it may be the most luxurious.

The Wolves host the Milton Eagles on Thursday in the stadium’s first regular-season game, which will be broadcast nationally on ESPN. With 13 Georgia state championships from 2001 to 2021 and a long record of players progressing to college scholarships and, eventually, the NFL, Buford is a football powerhouse – and the new stadium is a loud statement of the school’s desire to keep it that way.

If it feels like half of Buford is at the big game … they probably are. The Atlanta-area city has roughly 19,000 residents and the well-regarded high school (rebuilt in 2019 for $85m) has about 1,900 students. In 2010, another educational institution in the Atlanta region, Kennesaw State University, built a smart 10,200 capacity multi-use stadium for $16.5m. In the past 15 years, however, construction costs have soared, fan expectations have evolved, streaming and social media have changed how we consume sports and college athletes are now allowed to earn significant sums by monetising their personal brands. The trend is clear: newer, fancier, costlier.

Phillip Beard Stadium has the typical uncovered benches familiar to anyone who’s seen Friday Night Lights. Yet it also boasts more than 1,500 premium seats, 15 suites, a 3,600 sq ft double-sided video board and a 10,500 sq ft event space with a trophy wall. Buford City manager Bryan Kerlin told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the stadium had been paid for by the city general funds and its funding “had no impact on teacher salaries, classroom resources, or any educational funding”. Still, there may well be other parts of the city the money could have been diverted to.

Besides, blending spartan spaces for students and high-end facilities for corporate clients and rich alumni is increasingly common. It could make financial sense for schools aiming to maximise revenues and claw back some of the construction and operating costs, according to Victor Matheson, an economics professor at College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. “The economics term is price differentiation,” he says. It’s long been common in professional sports as teams adopt a strategy beloved of airlines, with their myriad fare classes and options: charging wildly different amounts for the same product based on variations in the customer experience.

As the masses in the cheap seats generate the noise, corporate boxes can deliver thousands of dollars in income per event, giant video screens appeal to advertisers, and perhaps former students who’ve been wined and dined in air-conditioned comfort and enjoyed a perfect view of the action will be inspired to make generous donations to the alma mater.

Upscale new arenas are also a way to entice fans off the couch in an era when it seems like almost every sporting contest, no matter how obscure, is streamed. “Everyone knows their biggest competitor is being able to watch on TV,” Matheson says. Climate-controlled facilities mitigate against extreme weather, and with gargantuan video boards, televisions on concourses, myriad food and drink options and glitzy graphics on LED ribbon displays, fans can go to the stadium, experience the live atmosphere and still gaze at screens.

Northwestern University in Illinois is building a privately-funded new stadium guided by the principle of “premium for everybody,” reports Front Office Sports. At a projected cost of $862m it will be the most expensive college stadium ever, yet with only 35,000 seats it will hold 12,000 fewer people than the venue it is replacing. The theory underpinning the design is that modern fans want a more intimate and luxurious experience, with changing tastes – and a changing climate – rendering even relatively recent venues obsolete.

In 2020 Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers quit their open-air 48,000-capacity ballpark, which opened in 1994, for a new 40,000-capacity building with a retractable roof. This season a minor league baseball team, the Salt Lake Bees, moved from Smith’s Ballpark, which also opened in 1994, to a new home, hiking ticket prices and halving their seating capacity in the process. The concentration on high-end customers, of course, prices out fans who cannot afford to spend heavily on a night out at the game.

“In all, premium seating makes up one-sixth of seats at the new ballpark, whereas it contributed to just 3% of Smith’s Ballpark’s capacity,” the Salt Lake Tribune reported. “The seats closest to the action aren’t available for sale on a per-ticket basis; instead, those are field-level suites that must be reserved in their entirety.” Sports’ growing focus on premium customers mirrors a shift in the American economy as a whole: this year a Moody’s Analytics study found that the US economy is now deeply reliant on the richest households, with the top 10% of earners accounting for 50% of consumer spending, a sharp rise from recent decades.

Logically, better facilities should breed better players, with victories leading to bigger attendances, swelling civic pride, adding to the appeal of the fast-growing suburbs where large high school stadiums are often located and boosting the prospects of the kids who dream of reaching the NFL. The trickle-down effect from the professional and college ranks to high schools isn’t only a matter of swankier facilities. It’s also visible in the potential financial incentives.

College players have been permitted to make money from their name, image and likeness (NIL) rights since 2021. In June this year a former high school player filed a class-action lawsuit in California challenging restrictions on the ability of the state’s high school student-athletes to profit from their NIL rights. It could pave the way for high school stars across the US to earn income and to transfer to other schools for sporting reasons. “Corporations see a lot of untapped economic value in high school athletics,” Yaman Salahi, an attorney representing the player named in the suit, said in a statement to Front Office Sports, “and we want to ensure that value is shared equitably with the athletes that create it.”

Like teenaged soccer starlets at professional clubs in other countries, 16- and 17-year-old American football players might one day be wealthy and famous, with a status to match the grandeur of their home stadiums. “The difference here is that it’s the local public school that’s doing the development,” Matheson points out.

For now, stadiums as sizeable and expensive as Buford’s remain rare outside Texas, the state that is the centre of the high school football infrastructure arms race. In 2017 the independent school district in the Houston-area suburb of Katy opened a $70m, 12,000-capacity stadium adjacent to its existing and still operational 9,800-seat venue.

According to the website TexasBob.com, more than a quarter of the 1,267 high school football stadiums in Texas can hold over 5,000 people, with eight seating at least 16,500. The combined capacity of 4.4 million is larger than the populations of 24 states. About a quarter have video scoreboards and 27 high school stadiums have opened in Texas since 2020. A $56m multi-purpose venue in the Houston-area city of La Porte is set to host its inaugural match this month.

Texas produces more NFL players than any other state, found a study by the data analysis firm Lineups, with Houston the leading city. On the other hand, Texas is ranked 34th for educational attainment by US News & World Report, is far below the national average for teacher pay and expenditures per student, and according to one study, this year Texas teachers expect to spend on average $1,550 of their own money on classroom supplies. Many would argue there are better things to spend money on than school sports.

Fans hoping for a college football version of the NFL RedZone following a deal between ESPN and the NFL might have to wait a bit for some complicated wrinkles to be ironed out. Rights will have a lot to do with it.

While the NFL’s television rights deals are relatively consolidated, college football’s are not. And that could create some serious hurdles to a college RedZone package.

According to a report from Front Office Sports, FOX Sports could be a significant hurdle in the race to produce a college RedZone offering. FOX carries the Big Noon game of the week in the Big Ten, as well as other conference offerings for both the Big Ten and Big 12.

And FOS reports that FOX is unlikely to license its Big Ten or Big 12 games to ESPN for fear of cannibalizing its own viewership. Per FOS: “Fox would require significant ownership in the venture to have any willingness to participate.”

The news comes after hints of a potential college RedZone offering for fans. The NFL’s recent deal with ESPN allowed the sports giant to take over the NFL RedZone package.

Even NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has hinted at a college version of the extremely popular broadcast. To wit:

Roger Goodell hints at College RedZone

Roger Goodell is looking into having a RedZone channel for college football after ESPN acquired the NFL Network. While appearing on ESPN’s SportsCenter, the NFL commissioner hinted at the potential launch of College Football RedZone.

“It’ll continue to be produced right here in this building,” Roger Goodell said from NFL Network’s broadcast studio in L.A. when asked about the future of NFL RedZone. “It will be the NFL RedZone. I don’t think fans will see any difference to that.

“Obviously, in the context of that, though, ESPN purchased the RedZone name, and they will be able to utilize that for other sports, college football and other things, and I think that could be an exciting thing for our fans also to see a RedZone, maybe in college football or other sports. That’s something that they now own and have the ability to do that. But as far as Red Zone, NFL Red Zone, there won’t be any changes for our plans.”

On3’s Brian Jones also contributed to this report.

One of the biggest stories of the offseason came in Lubbock. Texas Tech received a major NIL investment from its collective, The Matador Club, and brought in the top-rated transfer portal class.

Suddenly, the Red Raiders are seen as potential contenders in the Big 12. Todd McShay raved about the roster overhaul and how it put the program in strong position in an intriguing race.

McShay shouted out The Matador Club and founder Cody Campbell for the investment as he pointed out the transfer additions at Texas Tech. The class ranked No. 1 in the On3 Team Transfer Portal Index with Stanford transfer David Bailey as the headliner. He appeared in McShay’s “appropriately early” mock draft Thursday.

Texas Tech’s roster is one of the most expensive in college football, On3’s Pete Nakos reported. The group of newcomers could boost the floor for Texas Tech under Joey McGuire. As McShay looked at the Big 12 landscape, he thinks the Red Raiders are up toward the top along with Arizona State.

“Joey McGuire now, head coach, 23-16 during three years. Pretty good,” McShay said on The Todd McShay Show this week. “They haven’t had great talent. They lose Tahj Brooks and 1,505 [yards] he rushed for last year. So they lose that, but now you got all these other [players] and now we’re in the Big 12. Not the competition level of certainly the SEC and Big Ten and even the ACC.

“Arizona State, still the top dog. Sam Leavitt returns. [Cam] Skattebo’s out, they brought in a running back transfer, they’re gonna have two or three-man rotation. They’re going to spread things out more. It’s going to be Leavitt’s offense, not Skattebo’s, not the run game. Jordyn Tyson, a wide receiver, leading in the charge.”

McShay also pointed out some of the notable quarterbacks in the league. Avery Johnson is back at Kansas State, Rocco Becht is returning to Iowa State and Sawyer Robertson is preparing to once again lead the Baylor offense. Additionally, Utah is optimistic about its offensive line protecting Devon Dampier.

But as Todd McShay ran through those rosters, he still thinks Texas Tech put itself over the top with its work in the portal. As a result, he thinks the Red Raiders have one of the top rosters in the Big 12.

“I mentioned all those other programs – BYU, Kansas State, Iowa State, Baylor, Utah – based off of, like, the portal and all this talent coming in, there are a lot of people that believe it could be ASU [as] top dog and Texas Tech,” McShay said. “And I haven’t you mentioned Colorado, right? That’s going to be fascinating in the Big 12.”

Ten years ago, college football programs only had to worry about building their roster through high school recruiting and – when compared with 2025 – a much-less active transfer portal.

Now, college football programs have to worry about landing players with NIL money. Just look at UNC’s pursuit of a starting quarterback for this fall, as Gio Lopez signed a $4 million deal to come over from South Alabama.

Advertisement

North Carolina also landed its entire, projected starting defensive line through the transfer portal, plus its likely starting center in Christo Kelly.

During media availability before practice on Wednesday, Bill Belichick spoke about building the Tar Heels with money now in the picture.

“Right now, we’re kind of in between the revenue, what it’s going to be next year is a little bit different than what it is now,” Belichick said. “We’re going to have a recruiting class come in that’s going to affect it more than with last year’s recruiting class, because we didn’t really have much of one. So I think the economics are going to change significantly from ‘25 to ‘26. Let’s just say, generally speaking, we want to try to get good players. I wouldn’t want to lose a good player over a few $1,000 because, say we’re over our budget. If he’s that good of a player, we give them a little bit of the extra money to get them and figure it out somewhere else.” So it’s a very fluid situation, but to Mike’s point, I definitely agree. Mike and I are on the same page. Offensive and defensive lines are important, you’ve got to have that.”

UNC made a significant investment into its football program last year, hiring Belichick to be its next head coach, which in turn increased UNC’s NIL budget. North Carolina’s hope is it’ll be able to land higher-quality players as a result, which we’ll get a first taste of this fall.

Follow us @TarHeelsWire on X and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of North Carolina Tar Heels news, notes and opinions.

Advertisement

This article originally appeared on Tar Heels Wire: Bill Belichick highlights importance of building UNC roster with money

STILLWATER – Oklahoma State won its ninth consecutive season opener Thursday night with a 2-0 victory over Mercer at Neal Patterson Stadium.
 
The 22^nd-ranked Cowgirls scored both goals off corner kicks in the final 10 minutes, with Reganne Morris and Xcaret Pineda each finding the back of the net.
 
In her first-career start, Logan Marks recorded four saves on eight shots by the Bears to earn the shutout.
 
Despite controlling the attack throughout, the Cowgirls did not break through until the 81^st minute. Off a Pineda corner kick into the box, Jazmin Brown headed the ball forward to Morris, who lifted a header of her own over Mercer goalie Lindsay Bell and into the net.
 
Pineda sealed the win with just over a minute remaining in the match when she drilled a corner kick that sailed over Bell and curved into the far post to put OSU up 2-0.
 
OSU finished with a 26-8 advantage in shots, while posting an 11-2 edge in corner kicks.
 
The Cowgirls return to action Sunday when they travel to Norman to take on Bedlam rival Oklahoma in a match scheduled for a 7 p.m. start.