Greg Byrne Talks Football Scheduling, Coleman Coliseum Timeline and More
From the unveiling of the Crimson Standard masterplan for facilities to setting up future home-and-home series for football, Greg Byrne has been active in laying the groundwork for the direction of Alabama's athletic department.
During his visit on Inside the Locker Room, the University of Alabama's director of athletics touched on a numerous topics including the football program's future schedule, rebuilding Crimson Tide baseball into a winner and the timetable for beginning the renovation to Coleman Coliseum.
Over the next 15 years, Alabama football will have home-and-home series with Texas, South Florida, West Virginia, Notre Dame and Oklahoma.
After explaining the process of scheduling a home-and-home series, Byrne provided an example of how Alabama and Oklahoma came to an agreement on their future series.
"For us with Oklahoma where we did it all the way out to '32-'33, That was the first time that Joe Castiglione their athletics director and myself could find a date and time that worked for both programs, and we talked about a lot of different time frames." Byrne said.
Following the upcoming football season, renovation work will begin on Bryant-Denny Stadium. In addition to improving the overall experience at home football games, Alabama's director of athletics mentioned how the money generated from football will go toward helping other sports.
"The money from Phase One in the Crimson Standard and the improvements to Bryant-Denny Stadium are going to help us get the revenue to pay for all the other things that we want to do." Byrne said.
Another project that is a major part of the Crimson Standard plan is a complete redo of Coleman Coliseum. According to Byrne, the key to getting the project off the ground is having success in generating money for the renovation.
"It is all fundraising dependent". Byrne said. "If we continue to make the progress that we have in development, that's going to give us the best opportunity to do that."
He also laid out a best case scenario for beginning the project.
"I think the best case scenario is probably three to four years away from getting the shovel on the ground on that." Byrne said.
In addition to his thoughts on the Bryant-Denny Stadium and Coleman Coliseum projects, find out what Alabama's director of athletics had to say on Brad Bohannon's coaching performance with Crimson Tide baseball, the difficulties with the 11.7 scholarship limit in college baseball and the ways he wants to see the fan experience improve at Alabama home football games.
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