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State wants Coastal Carolina to find more private funding for stadium

Coastal Carolina is having some trouble getting its stadium expansion plans approved.

The school is planning to expand its stadium as the team moves to FBS and the Sun Belt Conference for the 2017 season. The Brooks Stadium expansion project, initially budgeted at $38 million, was presented to the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education on Thursday with a budget just under $30 million.

It's necessary for the stadium to expand for FBS requirements. Brooks Stadium currently seats just over 9,000 and FBS teams must have an average attendance of at least 15,000 fans.

Per The Myrtle Beach Sun and News, it was the fourth time since February that the school had presented its case to the commission, which reviewed the plan during a school board of trustees meeting.. The new budget included bond funding "to be as low as $22.9 million" after the board of trustees approved a $2 million contribution from a reserve fund.

The plan was voted down 9-4 as the commission would like to see more private funds used up front for the project.

“We take the responsibility very seriously. This is not an easy decision. We champion everything that you’re about as an institution,” [commission chairman Tim] Hofferth said prior to the vote. “ ... At the end of the day, I’ve talked to a lot of athletic directors, a lot of presidents throughout the country, to bring it without significant private funding in today’s environment [is risky]. The question is what’s significant? I don’t know. There’s 13 [different] significant answers here. The fact of the matter is it’s very relevant and the thing that I’m afraid of, the costs on the operating side are nowhere near what you anticipate them to be. ...

“That’s my greatest concern in this environment. I want to get there. I’m just not there yet.”

Coastal Carolina's move to the Sun Belt makes the league a 10-team league in 2017. The league currently has 11 teams but Idaho and New Mexico State are no longer part of the league after this season.

The budget reduction for the project also means that Coastal has scaled down its stadium expansion ideas, including dropping the new projected capacity to under 20,000. School officials are wanting to get the process greenlighted so it can be complete in time for the 2017 season and avoid any NCAA and Sun Belt headaches.

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“We did make the commitment to the Sun Belt Conference, which requires the stadium expansion. Our failure to meet that commitment could result in a number of things, the first being the negative media coverage that will hurt Coastal Carolina University for years,” Coastal Carolina president David DeCenzo said during the Thursday meeting. “We have contracts with power-five schools which will pay us over $1 million per game; without being FBS we will never see that money, and worse yet we may have to break those contracts, which would result in a financial liability to us.

“But most importantly are the 25 recruits that we signed this year, eight of whom are from South Carolina. They start Coastal in the fall. Our failure to move this project along means our inability to meet NCAA requirements is in jeopardy, as would be our FBS standing. As a result we’d have to tell those 25 athletes that we cannot afford them the full scholarship they were promised when they signed with Coastal Carolina University. That to me would be the biggest tragedy of all.”

Coastal Carolina first started football in 2003. It won the Big South from 2004-2006 and has seven conference championships. The Chanticleers were 9-3 in 2015 and lost to The Citadel (who beat South Carolina) in the first round of the FCS playoffs.

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Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!