SAN ANTONIO — Lynn Hickey didn't take a tour. But the UTSA athletic director saw enough from her seat last Friday night.

She saw the University of Houston proudly open a $120 million stadium, albeit with a loss to the Roadrunners.

“It's sharp,” she said. “It's going to be a great stadium.”

So is this the dream of the Roadrunners? Do they want their own, shiny venue on their campus?

“No,” Hickey said without hesitation, and Thursday night is another reason why.

UTSA hosts the University of Arizona in its home opener with considerable optimism. Last week, USA Today declared the Roadrunners have “grown faster than any program in the modern history of college football,” and that was before they beat Houston.

Larry Coker gets credit, as do Hickey and others. But little of the success would have happened without a place that is always 72 degrees and ready to help.

The Alamodome always was supposed to be about something bigger, and Thursday night will repeat that tease. Operational staffers of the Oakland Raiders are expected to be in attendance at the UTSA-Arizona game to observe the dome in action.

But even without the NFL, the building has been worth its debt-free, $189 million price tag. It has hosted Final Fours and boxing matches, bowl games and concerts, and it acted as a holding pen for the Spurs until an arena consensus could be reached.

Now the Alamodome plays an unintended role, and something Hickey likes to ask people sums that up.

Which three football teams are fulltime tenants in domed stadiums in Texas?

Cowboys. Texans. And Roadrunners.

“How cool is that?” Hickey says.

How cool? The better question is this: If not for the Alamodome, where would this football program be?

After all, UH's venue isn't even the latest to debut. Baylor opened its $266 million version Sunday.

TCU already has spent $105 million to turn its stadium, as the school said, into “the Camden Yards of collegiate football stadiums.” And Texas A&M will dwarf all of them with a $450 million remodeling job.

This goes beyond state borders, too. A&M will be one of four schools in the SEC with a stadium that seats over 100,000, and overall the conference will have spent $760.5 million on its current projects alone.

Add to that the opulence — Oregon players dress for practice in German-made lockers that cost $26,000 each — and there's an arms race never before seen. According to federal data compiled by an Alabama business journal, expenses for the average Football Bowl Subdivision team increased almost 50 percent between 2007 and 2012.

In the span of these years, starting from scratch, came the Roadrunners. In most other cities, they'd have to settle for an aging municipal stadium or a high school stadium until they could afford to patch together something useable.

Instead, UTSA gets an upscale venue. A recruiting edge. And a downtown location that allows UTSA to market to the entire city.

“I honestly think we have the second or third best college stadium in the state,” Hickey said. And while Hickey would get an argument from a few schools on that, it's stunning to think a program such as UTSA could even claim such a thing.

It's not a one-sided relationship. UTSA receives ticket revenue and picks up expenses, and the city pockets concessions and parking.

In addition, UTSA gives the Alamodome an anchor tenant. Two years ago, when UTSA and the city agreed on a contract extension through 2035, the director of the city's convention and sports facilities understood the dynamic.

“The past year was our most successful since the Spurs left,” said Mike Sawaya. “And it's mostly attributable to UTSA.”

Still, the Alamodome would survive without UTSA football. It did before.

But the Roadrunners without the dome? A few things wouldn't be happening right now.

A Pac-12 team playing in San Antonio on Thursday is just one.

bharvey@express-news.net

Twitter: @Buck_SA