An extended partnership with Yellawood will now allow Auburn athletics to display “Pat Dye Field” on each 25-yard line at Jordan-Hare Stadium, the athletic department announced on Wednesday, paying tribute to the legendary Auburn coach Pat Dye.
“When the opportunity arose to do it, I knew I did not want that sacred field to be just used for a commercial,” Yellawood founder and CEO Jimmy Rane said in a release. “I didn’t want it to just be some company’s name on there. If we were going to do this, I wanted to make sure it first and foremost honored Coach Dye and that our name was smaller, lower and under his – because it’s Pat Dye Field.”
The words will be displayed at 18 feet high and 21 feet wide on each 25-yard line, and will have Yellawood’s logo. Auburn Sports Properties, a division of Playfly Sports, facilitated the deal.
Dye led the Tigers to four SEC championships and a national championship – claimed by Auburn on Tuesday – in 1983. He posted a 99-43-4 record in his 11-year tenure at Auburn.
The Tigers’ field at Jordan-Hare Stadium has been named “Pat Dye Field’ since 2005, the same year Dye was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
“For people my age, Coach Dye put this program on the map of what it could become,” Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze said in a release. “The way he led men and the stories you hear from his players, he developed Auburn men. He’s simply a legend.
“It’s quite fitting that you get YellaWood and Pat Dye Field to be synonymous together in this way. It’s proper for everything they’ve both done for this program," he added.
Auburn fans will get to view the new addition to the gridiron on Sept. 6 as the Tigers host Ball State for Kickoff on the Plains at 6:30 p.m. CT.
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