KALAMAZOO, MI - A new main video scoreboard and up to two additional video boards at Western Michigan University's Waldo Stadium are expected to be in place by the start of the upcoming season, football coach P.J. Fleck said Friday.

Fleck said the project is expected to cost around $2 million and will be completed by Sept. 4, when the Broncos host Michigan State in the season opener. It is believed the game will be televised on an ESPN network or Big Ten Network.

Fleck said the new main video scoreboard will be larger than the existing scoreboard and the two additional video boards would be placed at the opposite end of the stadium and attached to the Seelye Center.

The Broncos' third-year coach said the scoreboard upgrade is part of the ongoing process to make Waldo Stadium an exciting entertainment venue.

"We want to make it the most entertaining venue in our conference and to be able to do that you have to create an entertaining experience and how do you do that? Video boards," Fleck explained. "People who don't necessarily like football, hopefully it will attract them to the stadium just to see what the experience is like at Waldo Stadium.

"As lively as this venue can be is as good as a lively Big Ten environment. I truly believe that. We have to get that to where people see it, we have to get our facilities to where it can become it and then it just becomes a way of life."

Western Michigan football head coach PJ Fleck and his team get ready to enter Waldo Stadium before their first home game of the season, Saturday, September 20, 2014, in Kalamazoo, Mich.

Design renderings of what the new scoreboards might look like were not available Friday morning as Fleck said they were still being set in stone by the university.

The existing scoreboard was installed in 2003, but due to weather and wear and tear it became less and less functional in recent years - most noticeably the video replay board almost always had black malfunctioning sections.

Due to the rapid pace of increasing technology repairs became nearly impossible. WMU officials said last year they could not turn the scoreboard completely off in fear of it not turning back on.

In addition to the new video boards, a new sound system is expected to be installed at Waldo Stadium as well.

Western Michigan athletic director Kathy Beauregard said in December the athletic department set a goal to raise $3 million, which would give the football program, in a sense, its dream scoreboard, but she said that wasn't the minimum amount needed.

WMU spent $3.4 million on renovations to the Seelye Center, Bill Brown Alumni Football Center and the turf at Waldo Stadium over the first year of Fleck's tenure. That money and the funding needed for the new scoreboard were privately fundraised by Fleck and WMU.

It was announced earlier this month that billionaire Alec Gores, a WMU alum, donated $2 million to help fund the scoreboard project.

Questions and concerns have been brought up about the money being put into the football program since Fleck's arrival, with some people arguing the money should be invested in the academic programs and other areas of the university.

Fleck recognized those points Friday and offered a counter point by saying a football program is a window into a university.

"It takes a lot for an athletic director to go ahead and say, 'you can raise that money,' because there are a lot of needs at our university," he said. "Football is not the most important thing to this university, but it is a front porch. You get three-and-a-half hours of bowl game on television and that's advertising for the whole institution and the city of Kalamazoo."

To Fleck's credit, he stretched every fundraised dollar to get the biggest bang for the buck with the previous $3.4 million, which is not an astronomical amount in the wider scope of the college football landscape.

He credited Beauregard, school president John Dunn and Jan Van Der Kley, the school's vice president for business and finance for their support in the fundraising, design and timeliness aspects of the renovation projects.

Fleck said there are more renovations projects on his list, but said they are more long term undertakings, including bowling in the west end of the stadium with seats and renovating the entire west end of the stadium.

Email David Drew at ddrew1@mlive.com and follow him on Twitter and on Instagram.