Graham Neff details how Clemson decides when to upgrade facilities

The job of an athletics director has arguably never been more difficult with NIL, the transfer portal and conference realignment are all obstacles to try and navigate. Of course there’s also still regular AD duties that must be dealt with, including upgrading facilities.

Clemson Athletics Director Graham Neff recently joined Eric Mac Lain and Kelly Gramlich on the Gramlich and Mac Lain podcast and discussed how he determines when to upgrade facilities.

“It’s not easy. We have 21 sports now, including the two new ones of women’s lacrosse and gymnastics. And we want to compete in all of them,” Neff said. “We like football here, no doubt. And we have a lot of success and we’re going to continue to invest significantly there, as we have. Obviously, the results and the support has come with that. But we want to win championships in all of our sports – which is an easy thing to say, but what’s the action, what’s the priority to do so?”

Clemson currently has multiple projects it is working on with facilities across many different sports, including new sports gymnastics and lacrosse. The athletics department is also in the process of updating and adding on to Jervey Gym.

“We are spending $37 million right now, we’ll finish it this fall – on our brand new lacrosse and gymnastics and rowing complex. And admittedly, those are not revenue-generating sports. There’s a lot of interest in our community for gymnastics, as there was for lacrosse last year. So we’re going to generate revenue. They are not non-revenue sports. But from like a business perspective, it’s football and basketball and baseball. But a lot of our sports really, beyond that, aren’t. But it’s really important for student experience… from a competitive drive standpoint,” Neff said.

“Later this fall we’ll announce groundbreaking of a new facility, performance and wellness facility, which is an extension of Jervey. Jervey was built in 1972. It’s literally 50 years old. … It needs time and attention and investment. So we looked at renovation and expansion. The decision was best made to build new. So now, it’ll be a high-impact facility that will affect 18 of our 21 sports. Olympic sports-focused, volleyball access as well. Sports med, training, strength and conditioning, high day-to-day impact for about 400 of our 525 student athletes.”

Neff added that some minor changes have also been made to the indoor football facility recently. The Allen N. Reeves Football Complex will also continue to be updated over the coming years.

“There’s absolutely the aspect of continuing investment or expansion. … [The indoor facility] was built in 2012, literally just last month… we just replaced the turf. It was here for 10 years,” Neff said. “We have had continued investment in the Reeves Football Operations facility, where we just did some expansion with our 100 yards of wellness, which was a $5 million investment. We just added our CAB – Athletic Branding institute, which is really a build on to that.”