— By Bill Cornwell
Tom Bodett coined the term “We’ll leave the light on for you” as a slogan for Motel 6 through the years.
Marshall football can adopt something similar with recent news that an enhanced lighting system is coming to Herd home games in the future.
Marshall Vice President and Director of Athletics Gerald Harrison announced this week that private money will pay for a major upgrade of the lighting system at Joan C. Edwards Stadium to be completed this summer.
“We got to a point where they’d deteriorated in quality and we needed to replace them,” Harrison said. “Our goal is to have this done by the first game of the season, which will be a night game.”
The new lighting system could cost up to $600,000 for purchase and installation.
More private money is being used to replace the artificial turf in the Chris Cline Athletic Center, which is utilized by nearly all teams at Marshall.
“Most fields last around seven years, but this surface is actually ten years old,” Harrison said. “It needed replacing in the worst way for safety purposes. Our athletes are performing really well and it’s time for us to fix some things.”
Turf replacement in the Cline Center will cost around $400,000.
The Athletic Committee of Marshall’s Board of Governors approved the MU Athletic Budget on Wednesday, and it will go into effect on July 1. Mar
That new budget will see a slight increase in spending offset by higher revenues.
Next year’s budget totals $39,517,675, which is $427,590 more than the current budget. Student fees fund about 17 percent of the new budget and 34 percent comes from university funds.
Harrison and Marshall President Brad Smith have noted the ultimate goal is to have a 50-50 balance of revenue, half coming from the university and the other half generated by the athletic department.
Harrison says Marshall’s recent run to a WNIT Championship proved profitable for the athletic department, netting $72,000 in ticket revenue from the three games MU hosted, including $48,000 in ticket sales from last Saturday’s sold-out title game against Illinois State.
Ticket revenue boosts were also reported for men’s basketball and baseball in the current fiscal year.
“The takeaway is that it is a good time to run with the Herd,” Harrison said. “People are excited about what’s going on at Marshall. We’ve been able to fix, in a short period of time, things to get us on the right track from a financial sustainability standpoint.”