Kansas reveals $450M Memorial Stadium renovation ahead of Fresno State game

By Canadian Press on August 22, 2025.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Travis Goff can picture what it was like to watch Kansas football players spill into Memorial Stadium when he was first hired as their athletic director. It was just over five years ago, back when the Jayhawks were a college football laughingstock.

The players would leave a door from the Anderson Family Football Complex, then get shepherded like cattle through a series of metal barriers. Finally, they would enter a century-old stadium crumbling from the top down through an inflatable tunnel.

“It’s a really tangible indication of how far the program has come,” Goff said.

He was speaking this week from a perch overlooking a rebuilt Memorial Stadium, the product of a $450 million investment in not just the football program but the entire north side of campus. Kansas was forced to play home games last year at Children’s Mercy Park, the home of MLS club Sporting Kansas City, and Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs, while the old stadium was razed and one of the largest building projects in school history hit full throttle.

The product will finally be on display Saturday night when the Jayhawks open the season against Fresno State.

All those efforts have resulted in a stadium that features several levels of seating on the west and north sides — the east will be redone after this season — along with 42 suites, new concourses, concession offerings and all the trimmings of modern luxury.

And yes, a new tunnel taking players from the now-adjoining football complex into the stadium on gameday.

“I think when you talk about facilities, or physically manifest things, there’s a correlation of where you were in the past,” Goff said. “Now you think about our tunnel entrance direct from the locker room, with lighting and cameras and audio and all things a program of this magnitude deserves, I think to me that really depicts how far Kansas football has come.”

Numerous athletic directors had tried and failed over the years to renovate Memorial Stadium, or replace it entirely. Just as many football coaches had tried to rebuild a program that failed to win more than three games at any point in a 12-year span.

Goff managed to get the stadium project going, though, with the support of the Kansas administration and some well-heeled and ambitious donors. Along the way, Goff also hired Lance Leipold, who took care of resurrecting the football program.

The Jayhawks have been to bowl games two of the past three seasons, just missing out on three straight in last year’s finale.

Neither Goff nor Leipold would ever acknowledge that the transient nature of the program last year, playing all of its games on the road or home games in the Kansas City area, was ultimately reflected in a losing record. But both have readily admitted how much they are looking forward to playing games on campus again.

“Last year was great. No excuses. We had great crowds, great environments,” Goff said, “but there’s something special about playing at home. … Our stadium is uniquely situated at the bottom of the hill, where you have campus above and a neighborhood surrounding you, and that’s part of the charm of gameday on campus.”

Thanks to the recent House settlement and revenue sharing in Division I athletics, budgets across the country are stretched ever thinner, and massive capital improvement projects are likely to become increasingly rare. But just in the past couple of weeks, the Lawrence city commission agreed to a $94.6 million tax incentive package to help finish the football stadium, while a $300 million donation from Kansas alum David Booth also includes money earmarked for the facility.

“Now, unequivocally, it cannot be questioned whether the University of Kansas is all in on football,” Goff said.

There was still a buzz of activity around the stadium this week, even as gameday ticked nearer. Signage was still going up, desks and tables were getting bolted into place, and the computer systems that run the concessions stands were being installed.

On the field, Leipold took his players through a couple of practices, just so they would know what the stadium felt like.

“There’s still a lot of people around here doing little things yet, and there are a lot of things that can be distracting. Our job is to get ready to play,” Leipold said. “It will be exciting. Hopefully the energy is something that we can thrive off of and things like that. But you know, our job is to get ready to play a football game.

“I don’t want to downgrade all the great excitement about this game, the energy and the efforts that have gone into it by the athletic department and our donors and fans. But our job is to play our best football and find a way to win the game.”

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Dave Skretta, The Associated Press