Boone Pickens Stadium
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Boone Pickens Stadium |
Stadium Information |
The relocation of the Cowboy football
operations to the west end zone in the summer of 2009 punctuates one of
the largest building projects in recent NCAA history. And the result is
the new home of Cowboy football.
Boone Pickens Stadium is now a state-of-the-art facility that not only
provides Oklahoma State football with a unique game-day environment and
a roaring home-field advantage, but also with unrivaled facilities for
daily operations located in incredibly convenient proximities.
Boone Pickens Stadium officially opened a new south side in 2004, a new
north side in 2006 and in 2009 put the wraps on the west end zone
project. And while the new digs put OSU on the cutting edge of
collegiate facilities, the Cowboys still enjoy the home-field advantage
that suffocates opponents with the tightest sidelines in all of
football.
The result is that every fan in attendance is close to the action and
very much a part of the OSU gameday experience in the coziest
60,000-seat stadium in America.
The west end zone project provides “BPS” with a new multilevel football
operations center. Some of the new features include football offices,
meeting rooms, speed and conditioning center, locker rooms, equipment
room, athletic medicine center, media facilities, and hall of fame
areas, along with a new training table. Atop the facility, Boone Pickens
Stadium is ringed by more than 100 suites and 4,000 club seats.The
stadium will officially be re-dedicated on Sept. 5, 2009, when the
Cowboys open the season against Georgia.
The wheels were set in motion on the multi-faceted, multi-year stadium
project when OSU graduate Boone Pickens made the single-largest gift in
school history in 2003. His $70 million donation ($20 million of which
was earmarked for stadium expansion) spurred the “Next Level Campaign”,
which generated more than $100 million in gifts and pledges and involved
more than 2,500 individuals, making it the single-most successful
campaign in OSU history. |
Welcome to Orange Country
Things are different now. There is a new
commitment to winning at Oklahoma State. And tangible brick and mortar
proof of that commitment is now on display.
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Pickens capped the fundraising
effort in 2005 with his monumental gift of $165 million that will not
only benefit Cowboy football, but will aid with the development of OSU’s
planned multi-million dollar athletic village. The gift is the largest
ever received by a university athletic department.
It’s not just the stadium that is changing. In 2005, the playing surface
was replaced with Football Pro, a surface created by Millennium Sports
Technologies. It is considered the best and most durable synthetic
surface available.
OSU’s football home is now far removed from the original field that
opened in 1913. The Cowboys’ first athletic field gained its first
permanent seating in 1920 and was repositioned from north-south to
east-west to “avoid the prevailing strong winds” in the early 1900s.
The stadium was originally named after Laymon Lowery Lewis, the popular
dean of veterinary medicine in the early 1900s. The first addition to
the stadium came in 1924 with the steel and concrete portion of the
south stadium. During the 1929-30 seasons, 8,000 permanent seats were
built on the north side to bring the capacity to 13,000.
In 1947, the south stadium was increased from 20 to 53 rows and capacity
climbed to over 30,000. The first permanent press box was added in 1948.
Prior to the 1950 season, 10,600 more seats were added to the north
stands, increasing capacity to 39,000.The next expansion didn’t come
until 1971 when the cinder track around the field was removed. The field
was lowered 12 feet and 20 rows of permanent seating were added to both
sides.
The first artificial surface was installed in 1971 at a cost of $2.5
million, and the coaches’ offices (now part of the Athletic Center) were
constructed prior to the start of the 1978 season.
The stadium’s press box was torn down and reconstructed in 1980 and the
lighting system was installed prior to the 1985 season.
A second artificial surface was installed prior to the 2000 season and
remained in place until the summer of 2005.
Due to construction, official capacity at Boone Pickens Stadium had
dropped to 44,700 before climbing back to an all-time high of 60,000 in
2008 when seats in the new west end zone were opened.
As a result, OSU set a new single-game attendance record and had its
highest average attendance in nearly 25 years.
In the east end zone is the Athletics Center, home of historic
Gallagher-Iba Arena. Atop the athletic center are the only suites in
college athletics that can be utilized for football and basketball. |
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