Athletic director Dan Radakovich spoke to the media today and touched on few topics in a press conference held inside the indoor practice facility on the campus of the University of Miami. The former Clemson AD updated ticket sales for the Miami Hurricanes football season. He told the media today that they have distributed over 50 thousand tickets for the season opener against Bethune-Cookman this Saturday at Hard Rock Stadium.

“I think our number is 46 or 47 thousand that’s the total season tickets that we can sell, Radakovich said. “This is up about six thousand from last year from what I’m told so yeah, good progress.”

The primary focus for the athletic director and his staff is to work toward upgrading the athletic facilities. Radakovich is looking to be on par with some of the best programs in the country.

"Our idea from jump street really was to build the forever home of University of Miami football. A football operations center, much like you see at other campuses around the country. We are well on our way moving forward with that."

Initial steps have begun behind the scenes for the expansion of the current facilities. Fundraising for the venture will be paramount for the initiative to come to fruition.

“You are going to start and have started in kind of a silent phase of fundraising for that project and it’s going incredibly well. I think as the fall unfolds we’ll have more of a public-facing focus on that. A little opening for where that’s going, but rest assured that is priority one that we’re working on.”

Miami will be looking to build a world-class facility on its campus in Coral Gables. Radakovich is aiming to use the current indoor facility and expand it to a full field. There is no timeline as to when the facility will be complete.

Alonzo Highsmith, the Miami alum, former NFL scout, and now general manager for the Miami football program, is not only involved in building the future of the football team, but he is also involved administratively. This creates a bridge between the football team and the administration to help remove obstacles.

“He is also part of our senior staff I want to make that clear because that was really important for Alonzo to come here and also to see the other side of it, the administrative side. When we meet every Tuesday Alonzo is part of our senior staff meeting. He gets to hear what’s going on throughout the department. We get to hear things that are going on within the football program so the communication level continues to rise.”

Radakovich dismissed talks of building a new stadium for the football program, reaffirming that Miami has a strong relationship with Hard Rock Stadium. Recent renderings have the community speculating about the future.

“We have a great relationship with Hard Rock Stadium,” Radakovich said. “We are very proud to play there. I think we have ten or eleven more years with a contract that we have with them. So our focus right now is not so much where we play those seven games a year. Our focus is on the 358 days a year that our student-athletes are here, getting instruction, having nutrition, weight rooms, sports medicine, we’re focusing on that right now, not where we might be able to play.”