Colorado State AD Jack Graham on stadium: 'We are going to get this thing done'

The Colorado St. Rams held their annual spring game on Saturday, but before the game began athletic director Jack Graham spoke to a handful of boosters. Graham discussed the progress of the new on-campus football stadium.

Currently the stadium project is in the "quiet phase" which is the process of designing the stadium and getting everything in order, that portion costs $20 million alone. Colorado State can not move onto the next phase the school needs to raise $125 million of the $250 million toward the stadium

Graham is very confident about the progress of this new stadium:

"I can tell you that what we've done since the first of the year, my confidence that we're going to get this thing done...We are going to get this thing done," Graham exclaimed. "[Colorado State president] Tony Frank is in as well. Tony Frank is right along side us helping us in the market place, talking to people, raising money."

The stadium is going to get built one of these days, and Graham even went as far to say that the stadium will be ready to go come the home opener for the 2016. As of now that is a home game against the Texas-San Antonio Roadrunners n Oct. 1, 2016, but that could obviously change especially since Colorado State needs another non-conference game.

A key reason to why Graham is promoting a new stadium so hard is that he understands that athletics is a huge marketing tool, especially when the football and basketball teams are great.

Colorado State's path to a new football stadium.

Complete coverage of the on-campus stadium.

This is known as the Flutie Effect which came from Doug Flutie's hail mary competition against Miami and propelled him to the Heisman Trophy, and what followed as a flood of applications to the school. This has occurred more recently with the likes of Butler, VCU and George Mason who made trips to the Final Four.

That is what Colorado State is looking to do with their sports and this on-campus football stadium is a start in the right direction.