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2 0 1 8 K I C K O F F S P E C I A L DRAWING POWER H I S T O R Y Former Penn State All-American Scott Radecic uses his passion for architecture to bring people together – including people at his alma mater o Penn State football player has had more influence over what Beaver Stadium looks like today – and probably what it will look like in the future – than Scott Radecic. A second-team All-America linebacker on Penn State's first national champi- onship team in 1982, Radecic was the point man for the company, HOK Sport, that designed and reconstructed Beaver Stadium in the $93.5 mil- lion expansion project completed in 2001. Then two years ago, Radecic and his team of architects and engineers at a new firm called Populous produced the current 20-year master plan for all of the univer- sity's athletics facilities. It's a long way from his deep ambition to be a football coach. That almost happened in 1997 at the end of his 12-year NFL career, even though he al- ready had spent seven years working part-time in the off-season for HOK. "I liked doing my job [at HOK] and it was good, but I really wanted to coach," Radecic said in recent telephone call from his Populous office in Kansas City. "My heart and soul was in football. I almost had three NFL coaching jobs: with Ted Marchibroda in Baltimore, with Marty Schottenheimer in Kanas City and with Fred Whittingham in Oakland. For one reason or another, over the course of a few months, they all went away. It was then that I finally realized the Lord wants me back at that architectural firm, because all these doors opened and closed." One of Radecic's favorite words to de- scribe his life since playing organized football for the Brentwood Dukes as a 10- year-old in his suburban Pittsburgh hometown is serendipitous. Webster's dictionary defines serendip- ity as "the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought." Radecic believes those many serendipitous moments throughout his 56 years are the reason he is the founder and a principal in Populous, the prime ar- chitectural company in the world for sports venues, with offices in Kansas City, London and Brisbane, Australia. "I had to beg my parents to play on the Brentwood Dukes," Radecic said. "All the kids seemed older than me. It was a 10- | BUILDING BOOM Radecic began working for HOK Sport while still playing for the Indi- anapolis Colts. He went on to help found the Populous de- sign firm and now oversees its college and NFL divisions. Photo courtesy of Populous N

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