People say there’s an arms race in college football, but at the Division II level, the rush to renovate facilities may be targeting game day more than pay day.

Recent upgrades at prominent Division II programs prove the point. Minnesota Duluth, for example, just completed a significant facelift and added only three rows of seats. Bloomsburg redid Redman Stadium to engage its football community, not its bankers. Washburn’s overhaul of Yager Stadium several years ago was more of a commitment to successful football than a business plan.

The payoff? Greater and more engaged crowds, better game environments and more return customers, all of which plays favorably in the Division II strategic-positioning platform – and serves as a model for other schools to emulate.

Officials at Minnesota Duluth said it was a convergence of enhancing the game-day experience, along with Division II’s branding, community-engagement and game-environment efforts, that led to the $6.5 million Malosky Stadium renovation that was christened September 11 in a nationally televised game against Southwest Minnesota State.

“Certainly, we’ve been wanting to renovate the stadium – to give the student-athletes, students and fans a great game-day experience,” said Assistant AD Karen Stromme, who’s also a member of the Division II Management Council. “Division II’s game-environment effort has educated us about how important it is to have a venue that provides fans with the amenities that make for the game-day experience. The more you are around the Division II strategic initiatives on a national level, the more you want to bring that energy back to your campus.”

At Washburn, the school invested in its football infrastructure and realized capital gains on customer satisfaction – and an improved product to boot. Athletics Director Loren Ferre said a peer approached him recently and said his own school had to make its program successful before making the renovations. But he told Ferre, “You made your renovations first and now your program is becoming successful.”

“We renovated so our football games would be more enjoyable to attend,” Ferre said, noting that ticket prices remained the same after the rebuild. “It has grown from there – it’s made a huge difference in the environment and atmosphere at our games.”

It’s a drastic change from trailer homes that had been placed on either side of the field as a temporary solution after major damage from a 1966 tornado, but which lingered for 35 years. When officials finally committed to refurbishment eight years ago, they created a three-story press box with luxury suites; a dedicated tailgating area; chair-back seating; an artificial playing surface; a new all-weather track surrounding the field; revamped concession areas; and improved restrooms, ticket booths and stadium entrances.

“The whole philosophy was to upgrade the look of the campus,” Ferre said. “But it also was a commitment back to the football program that we could sell to recruits – and a commitment to the students and the community.”

Community engagement also played into Bloomsburg’s decision to upgrade a structure built in 1974. The $3.2 million project features a press box with elevator, refurbished restrooms, an artificial turf field, new track and field facilities, a new parking lot and new visitor bleachers. “It simply was time to make a more substantial change,” said Athletics Director Mary Gardner, who also noted that the redesign allowed Bloomsburg to reinstate a full track and field program. “We did not make our decisions so much on a revenue standpoint as we did on a need to upgrade an outdated facility and to engage our football community. We are delighted as an institution, and certainly as an athletics department, to have the facility upgraded because the whole community benefits. It attracts people to the campus, and by extension, to the community.”

Division II Vice President Mike Racy said the recent renovation trend may signify more of a game-environment race than an arms race in Division II, which isn’t such a bad thing.

“As the community-engagement and game-environment efforts gain momentum in Division II, more schools are realizing what it takes to build community around an athletics event,” he said. “I’m seeing more efforts to demonstrate that schools want to be a focal point in their communities, and to either enhance the game-day experience for an already strong fan base or to create an experience to build that fan base from the ground up. It’s an exciting trend for Division II.”