Texas AD Chris Del Conte Lays Out Future Of Longhorn Facilities
Texas Longhorns Athletics Director Chris Del Conte introduced several initiatives to upgrade DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium Tuesday night, as well as the planned project for an updated football practice facility.
The new complex was initially announced by the university last April, and will begin construction this June. The updated sports complex will remain south of the Rec Sports Center at the current location of the Steve Hicks School of Social Work and Child Development Center.
Del Conte addressed the move of the center, stating he would not remove the office of the social work students if it was being used. After it was announced that the social work office was given an upgrade, Del Conte acted fast to secure the property for Texas Athletics.
"When the social work building became available, I met with President [Jay] Hartzell and asked if we could participate in this new venture to have that area, so we’ll have a brand new indoor and outdoor field," Del Conte said Tuesday evening.
Along with the practice facility, Del Conte outlined updates for a new scoreboard, recruiting lounge, refurbishments to the Touchdown Club, more upper-deck suites, and UT club and concessions inside the stadium.
The new football facility will also have private parking spaces for student-athletes.
“We’re going to address the scoreboard, it was time to get that done and to be honest, it’s kind of a mess, so we’ll have the new scoreboard ready to go this summer and it is going to be backlit with a whole new metal structure that when you see it and (teams) from the Southeastern Conference walk in, they’re going to know they’re in DKR-Memorial Stadium," said Del Conte. “We just finished part of our brand-new recruiting lounge, we just opened that up now.”
Another significant change coming to Austin is concession. Del Conte introduced plans for a “grab and go” method for fans to purchase promptly to enjoy the game without waiting in lines.
Del Conte mentioned how he wanted a more effort approach to provide food and drink options while granting a more efficient service for fans.
"We know you’re spending dollars on us so we want to be mindful of that and part of that is coming into the stadium and having accessible food at fan-friendly pricing,” Del Conte said. “We’ll be offering these throughout the stadium and if you see the grab-and-go’s that we have at Moody [Center] we’ll redo the concessions on the concourse of the east side now.”
As Texas makes the jump to the SEC, Del Conte hopes to be a premier location in the new conference. This includes making night games a vital part of the program over time in the Big 12 with 11 a.m. or mid-day kickoffs.
For Del Conte, the hope is Texas will be viewed alongside Alabama, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee as a premier destination for gamedays when it comes to late-night kicks.
“There are 11 am windows in the SEC, but they’re never Alabama against LSU or Alabama against Texas," said Del Conte. "Those games will always be later, it would be disingenuous of me to say that we won’t have any early games, I just don’t think we’ll have a steady diet of them.”
Texas opens the season at DKR on Aug. 31 against Colorado State.
