Ole Miss endzone project needs more financing

Ole Miss hopes to break ground on the north endzone project as soon as after the 2014 season.

Athletics director Ross Bjork said before the school's Rebel Road Trip event in Jackson Wednesday that the team needs additional financing in its Forward Together campaign to make that a reality, but they want to move soon on the last phase of the athletics construction. The school is almost done renovating the Manning Center, and has broken ground on the basketball arena and parking deck.

"Ideally we'd like to start after the '14 season and we're pushing towards that, but we also have to do it right," Bjork said. "If we don't do anything after '14 then '15 at the latest is our goal. We're on track to maybe do some things after '14, but we still have to raise more money and we still have to get the process identified."

The school hired an architecture firm to design the north endzone earlier this year, but it remains unclear what the final design will look like. The original designs, released with the debut of the campaign in 2011, looked like a completely bowled-in endzone that would be a dramatic front door to Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. But it also removed the Starnes Athletic Training Center, and no one could say where it would move to.

The design released last year, along with images of the parking deck and basketball arena, is not nearly as grandiose, but could allow for more use of suites. Ole Miss is focused on premium seating over total capacity, as sports on all levels face increasing competition from just staying at home and watching games on TV.

But that was also a drawing of the stadium, not a plan. Ole Miss is at the point now where what it can build depends on how much money it has on hand. The school currently has $108 million donated/pledged to the Forward Together campaign, up $25 million from last year's Rebel Road Trip. But it's $42 million short of the goal, and Bjork said they probably need to be at $120 million in order to break ground.

"It's complicated because you have those buildings there and you got the north endzone and the scoreboard," Bjork said. "You have to figure out what we can do to that west side press box, if anything. We want to make that part of the project, because we think there's some upside there. So we've added some twists and turns to the original campaign, but the original goal is still clear in our mind."

Bjork said that annual giving is up $500,000 year-to-date, and football season ticket renewals are right on line with last year.

Basketball adds transfers

Ole Miss signed a surprise transfer on Wednesday when UT-Martin guard Terence Smith joined the program.

Smith, who led the Skyhawks with 14.6 points per game and made 43.8 percent of his 3-pointers, is a graduate transfer and will be immediately eligible to play his final year. At 6-foot-4, Smith is probably a 2-guard for the Rebels.

The team also signed Rod Lawrence from South Plains Junior College, a 6-foot-4 guard who committed earlier this week. Ole Miss now has six signees for the class of 2014, and only two scholarships available. High school guard J.T. Escobar is "more than likely" headed to a prep school, coach Andy Kennedy said.

"We have a plan set up for each kid and that will become crystal clear to everybody pretty quickly," said Kennedy, acknowledging there will be more attrition.

To contact Hugh Kellenberger, call (601) 961-7291 or follow @HKellenbergerCL on Twitter.