This is engaging the community. I'm Michele Skalicky and, as usual, in the studio with me is Dr. Biff Williams, president of Missouri State University. Biff, Missouri State's participation in conference USA is underway. The university became an official member on July 1st. What does being part of C-USA mean for Missouri State athletics?
Williams: The main thing that it means is that it is — we are now competing at the highest level in all sports, so we've been competing at the highest level in all sports but football. Now we're at the highest level in all areas.
Missouri State won its first game as part of the FBS, the highest tier of Division I college football, against Marshall earlier this month. How important are wins like that one and getting people to come to games?
Williams: It really excited the community. I happened to be there. It was an exciting time. It was a — Marshall has a very strong tradition. Walking through their tailgating area was a little unnerving, although they were very hospitable and probably more hospitable at the beginning of the game than the end. So I waited a little bit after that, but — it means a lot. And in fact, Marshall has such a winning tradition. They were 15 and zero with home openers. And now they're 15 and one. And so it is not an easy place to go into and win. They have a great fan base. For our young men to go in there their first year in the FBS league — to, you know, go up and then go down and then go back and fight their way back shows the character of our our student athletes.
It seems like student participation in football games has waned in recent years. How can the university get them to come back?
Williams: I think Patrick Ransdell (MO State athletic director) and his team have done a good job of working with the student body. This summer I know the athletics director, as well as many of his staff, went to every SOAR welcome and encouraged them to come and get involved with athletics. I think our athletic administration has also gone to the faculty and the staff senates and have shared with them what's going on with athletics and has really asked them to come to the games. I think the students, one of their biggest requests was 'can we have more area for tailgating?' Before they were right behind McDonald and they were cramped, so they're moving them across Grand, which they wanted to do, to have more space. And then there will be some checks and balances where we, really, they can't go back to their dormitory unless they walk by the entrance. And I'm sure we're going to ask them to enter into the game and stay. And it's I think we've worked really hard on creating a better game day experience so that people will, once they attend the game, they'll have a lot of fun.
We talked about students. Why is it important to get the entire community invested in MSU sports?
Williams: Well, it takes an entire team to make this happen. As you know, with everything that's going on with NIL and with revenue share and different things, we need to have the community completely involved in it, and it benefits our community. If you look at the ROI of all these teams that are coming in and filling stadiums and creating an atmosphere within the community where people want to cheer for one another and get excited, it does help the economy. It does help our school. It does increase enrollment. We see in studies that teams that do really well, it increases your enrollment. So it's really going to be a team effort for our community to come out and support.
You've said Plaster Stadium needs a lot of upgrades. What's needed to be able to play on the same level as the other teams in the FBS?
Williams: So as we entered into conference USA, they were very clear at some of the minimal things that we needed to do to our stadium. And so our field — we knew that we were going to replace our field. Our field had lived its life, but we knew that we were going to transition to a new conference. And so why put a new field with a different logo and then have to change it? And so we really identified this as phase zero this year of what are the bare minimum needs that we have for the football stadium? So the bare minimum was the the football field itself. Then lighting because we're going to be on ESPN, we're going to be on CBS sports. We needed the right foot candles, and so we had to replace our lights. There's also infrastructure for sideline — the telecom and everything we needed for the ESPN truck. We had to put the ESPN truck dock. You'll see that there's a lot of infrastructure behind the new MO State sign. That's hiding a lot of the infrastructure there. We needed to do some painting and some upgrades to the seating and make sure that it's comfortable for for our fans. That is phase zero. Looking to the future, we need to make sure that we're competitive in recruiting student athletes. Right now, we need to revitalize the locker room. We need a new football locker room. We need to make sure that there's spaces for that football team. We've hired an architect. We're looking at phasing this in. We're eyeing right now McDonald arena, because right now it's almost empty because it needs some upgrades so why not upgrade that for the football facilities? So we really need to bring all our facilities up to date with Plaster Stadium. And it will really focus on football. Other athletics facilities are really quite good, but we need to make sure that we're keeping those in par, in line with the other schools. And so it's always a constant upgrade to those facilities.
Do you have any numbers in mind as far as how much it might cost to get to where you feel like we need to be?
Williams: So I don't. That's really where the architect is coming in, is we know we need a football locker room. We know we need to relocate the weight room. We know that we'll need an athletic training facility to serve the student athletes in that area. But that's really where the architect comes in and can share with us how much will it cost to renovate the existing facilities that we have?
And of course, McDonald Arena goes way back in Missouri State sports history so to keep it as part of it, you know, in this day and time is kind of exciting to think about.
Williams: Well, it's, you know, it's an icon on our campus. And it would be a shame to tear it down. And we don't want to do that. We want to focus on it. And also there's a tunnel that the football team used to run out of.
I remember that.
Williams: If I hear from faculty and staff and the community about one thing is it was so neat for them to run out of that tunnel. And so we really want to make that happen again. I've been in the tunnel. The tunnel is just fine. We just boarded it up, and it would be easy to open that up. And it would be great to have a locker room in McDonald Arena and then the football team could come out of that tunnel. So I think also what McDonald Arena does is it it really demonstrates that we have tradition. And so although there would be renovated space in there, we have a tradition of excellence on our campus, and it started at McDonald arena. And so to revitalize that building would really mean a lot to our campus and I believe our community.
Will we see a campaign to raise money for those improvements soon?
Williams: Absolutely. Most of these improvements will be through fundraising. And so, probably the majority of that. So you'll see that the master plan will come out here in the next, this academic year, and then we'll be moving forward on raising funds to make that happen.
Why should Springfield residents care that MSU has joined a new conference? I mean, what does it mean for the city?
Williams: Well, I think it means a lot. I think the city is being put on the map. It's just like with our institution. It's another front door to all the great things that are happening here in Springfield. I think it also gives us a way to unite with one another when you have a team that you're you're cheering for and you're at the biggest stage. It's the the top stage of intercollegiate athletics. And I think the community on an economic side, it will build the economy as well, and it recruits more students. And so the more students that we have, the better the economy becomes.
