Georgia AD Brooks Says NIL Will Slow Down Facilities Projects

University of Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks warned that with the coming changes in NIL, thanks to the still pending House v. NCAA settlement, work on facilities may begin to slow down.

“Honestly, I'm glad we got so much done the last four or five years because it's going to slow down as we evolve and money starts shifting more in NIL," Brooks said, as reported by UGASports, a subsidiary of Rivals.com. “You will see the facilities slow down. Naturally, just because we've got a lot knocked off the list."

The House case may ultimately call for up to $21 million in revenue from individual schools being used to directly compensate athletes. This could have a chilling impact on the facilities arms race, Brooks told media members last week during the SEC spring meetings in Destin, Fla.

"This change comes at a relatively good time for Georgia," Harrison Reno of UGASports wrote. "The 2024 athletic year was the first in which Georgia was able to show many of its most recent facility improvements.

This included the completion of a two-phase renovation project at Sanford Stadium, which saw the opening of the 1929 Club, offering more premium seating, restrooms and concessions stands on the south side of the stadium. The new Sanford Stadium press box opened in the southwest corner of the endzone, as well.

Foley Field, home of Bulldogs baseball, underwent a $45 million renovation that saw a turf field installed in addition to the construction of a new locker room, team meeting area, pitching lab, hitting tunnels and coaches' offices, among other improvements, Reno reported.

For softball, Georgia completed its $38.5 million facility that sits beside Jack Turner Stadium in October. "The project provided the program with a state-of-the-art facility, something that Brooks is still intent on providing across all sports," Reno wrote.

“One of the focuses for me is always the student-athlete experience," Brooks said of potential future projects. "I want to go to locker room to locker. room, make sure that we've got a couple more areas we need to get touched up. Then I've got to develop my team."

Still left on the to-do list for Georgia is the construction of a new facility for track and field that could wrap as early as the end of the year, according to Reno.

"We've got the track finishing in December, January, and then we'll shift over to the old track becoming practice field parking and all that," Brooks said.

He added that improvements to Sanford Stadium will continue well into the future.

“We have to develop a plan for Sanford Stadium, not just for my tenure, but I'm trying to think about the person coming after me," Brooks said. "We want to start putting a comprehensive plan for Sanford together, a five-, 10-, 15-, 20-year plan to where whatever we do builds upon each other to where when I'm gone, the next person comes in and goes, okay, here's the blueprint and how it's going to keep evolving."