Here's the deal.
When the deadline came, Colo St raised about $25M or so and had another $25M or so in "pledges."
Because this fell well short of their goal, Colo St value engineered the project from $254M to $220M.
Then, school president Tony Frank sought and obtained authorization to borrow all $220M, including $195M in revenue bonds. The $25-50M in donations and pledges will be used to pay off these bonds in the first few years.
These revenue bonds are not backed by the state. They are backed by Colo St. They were not sold based on the state's bond rating. They were sold based on Colo St's bond rating.
If stadium revenue is insufficient to meet the bond obligations, then Colorado State owes the bondholders and would have to divert money otherwise collected for tuition and student fees (or perhaps state or federal subsidies) to pay off the stadium instead of their intended use.
This means tuition and fees are going up and/or they have to ask the legislature for extra money and/or other programs and departments are going to be underfunded to move money to cover the stadium debt.
If they can't do this, then the school's bond rating will tank.
Basically, Colorado State's athletic program is fixing to get house poor unless that stadium generates a ton of revenue. Because at $10-13M per year in bond obligations, the football program would have to generate $17-19M just to be equal to what the revenue it is producing today ($4-6M).
The way it's structured (using the fundraised money to pay off the bonds the first ~5 years), it's almost as if they financed it with the expectation of joining a Power 5 league by 2022.
If that doesn't happen, look out below.
http://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/loc...e406af63b0