Dan Radakovich outlines plans to revamp Miami football facilities

Dan Radakovich is still getting his feet wet in South Beach as Miami‘s new athletics director, though is already tasked with a grand operation of improving the football facilities, along with a number of other projects related to every other sport offered on campus.

When Radakovich arrived in December of 2021, he called for a “full review” of Miami’s athletics facilities across campus. One of the projects that Radakovich has pushed for is revamping the football facilities, including the locker rooms which are currently under construction.

“The football locker room is the project du jour,” Radakovich said. “Trying to get that taken care of before the student-athletes come back for fall camp. The rest of the things, that is the deep dive into facilities we’re doing right now to understand how the process will work for expansion of the Soffer Indoor to 100 yards.

“Other important facility pieces we need … the Watsco Center — where it sits as it relates to basketball [and] a few smaller projects as it relates to weight rooms associated with basketball. But really what we hope to have happen is sometime this summer, before we kick it off in the fall, we want to have a facility plan that has been looked at and been given approvals by the university community on campus and by the Board of Trustees. That will allow us to take that and share it with all of you [and] our fan base and begin to start raising money for those facilities. It’s just not ready for prime time yet. It’s still in the evaluation stage in understanding where we need to go and how we need to get there.”

Radakovich had been the athletic director at Clemson since 2012 after six years at Georgia Tech in the same role. Prior to Georgia Tech, Radakovich was a senior associate athletic director at LSU from 2001-06, where he was instrumental in the renovation of Tiger Stadium.

He oversaw a period of growth for Clemson, including facility improvements and an impressive run of College Football Playoff appearances from the Tigers’ football team, including two College Football Playoff Championships. Notice the facility improvements came before the CFP titles and believes the same can happen at Miami.

“When you start at a new place, one of the things that happens is you want everything done because you left the place where you kind of knew where everything was,” he said. “[Now you’re] coming into a new spot where everything is new. Not a little bit new, it is new. So, I have to kind of look at where I was 100-plus days in for example, at Clemson, as it related to the facility plan and am I ahead or behind from from that pace? And I think we’re right on target.”