South Dakota State University has received two gifts totaling $12.5 million in support of its plan to build a new football stadium, the Collegian reports.

The gifts from South Dakota businessman and Giving Pledge signatory T. Denny Sanford and Sioux Falls banker Dana Dykhouse will help support construction of a proposed $65 million stadium that seats at least 18,500 fans and includes 27 suites, 156 loge-level seats, and more than 13,000 general admission seats. Slated to open in time for the 2016 season, Dana J. Dykhouse Stadium will be a three-sided bowl with an opening in the southwest corner. Sanford has agreed to give $10 million for the project, while Dykhouse, who played defensive line for SDSU in the 1970s, will contribute $2.5 million.

Dykhouse and Sanford previously worked together to raise $6 million for the Dykhouse Student-Athlete Center, which opened in 2010. Sanford has a long history of philanthropic largesse and has given more than half a billion dollars to organizations in South Dakota alone. In 2007, he contributed $400 million to Sioux Valley Hospitals and Health System in 2007 — which was renamed Sanford Health — and provided the system with an additional $100 million in 2011. Earlier this year, he fulfilled a 2006 pledge of $70 million to reopen the Homestake Mine in Lead, South Dakota, and he has also given $50 million to the Burnham Institute in California.

"You're going to be able to recruit the best athletes in the country," said Sanford. "They're going to come up here and say, 'Wow, this is where I want to play ball. This is the best place for me.' And we can continue to be champions."