Oregon's new Football Facility
- Thread starter BigJCy
- Start date
I agree - our weight room certainly screams that we are a serious Div. 1 football school, but it is certainly not as big as some others. We have to do more with less at ISU - and we do a great job of it.
Who are approximately as unbiased as a poster on Cyclone Fanatic.
"Yeah...I visited Iowa State and got a scholarship offer. Thought the facilities sucked but oh well."
Our weight room is one of the top ones in the country. There are other facilities (like this one) which blow ours out of the water. People can say the whole "These aren't the type of recruits we want if they need this pampering," to help them sleep at night but every single one is full of it. I don't care if they need a mani/pedi after the game each Saturday if they are an excellent football player. Oregon's facility might potentially win them a recruit...our facility is just going to make sure we don't lose any recruits. On a bang-for-the-buck basis we're keeping up but in the overall scheme we're still way behind (and never will catch up...and that's ok).
Yeah, that picture only shows a portion of their weight room. Though something like a 40 yard track being part of the weight room would allow them to quickly bump up that square footage. For example if you assume the 40 yard track area is 180 feet long by ten feet wide (I'm totally guessing an extra 20 yards for slowing down and for some area between the track and other equipment) you are looking at almost 2k of square footage just from that. How much else of that 25,000 square feet is similar stuff?
I think the important difference between our facilities now and the past is that what we have is on par with what anybody else has. Sure our hot tub doesn't have a waterfall, but we're got one of comparable size. Sure our weight room doesn't have a dedicated 40 yard dash area, but we have an indoor practice facility that is on the other side of the weight room wall where that can be done in comfort year round, and so on. Our stuff might be more utilitarian, but the training and recovery opportunities our guys have are comparable to what any other BCS school offers.
I stand corrected. That seems a bit inefficient then with 25000 sq ft of space used like the pictures we see. The thing also costed about 50 million more than ours. I wish we had a Phil Knight.
I don't disagree but I also think a lot of our improvements lately are also having a big impact in player development. A decade ago when a guy came to ISU out of high school he wouldn't have the opportunities to improve as somebody at a bigger program. Now a guy coming to ISU out of high school has the same ability to train as an athlete from any other school. The indoor practice facility and recovery facilities are as big or bigger for that as the weight room is. We still may not get five star recruits, but at least the guys we do recruit don't fall further behind every year.
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Yea. That's just gotta be a small portion of it, Cuz that looks smaller than our weight room was at Wartburg.
Ours, Wisky's and Iowas. That doesn't preclude me from looking at SQFT, dollars and amenities for all BCS schools though. Ours is very nice - don't get me wrong. Its no frills though, which I really like. We don't have the $$$ for IPADs and ps4's in the lockers. But our setup is functional and a huge step forward. I will get to see Tennesse's new facility later this fall - that one I'm really looking forward to.
SI.com has a different photo gallery now up:
Oregon's Football Facility: Behind the Scenes - Photos - SI.com
Oregon's Football Facility: Behind the Scenes - Photos - SI.com
I would get rid of any LOI after walking through that. Mother of God.
Built on the back of alternate jerseys. nojimlad.
Built on the back of alternate jerseys. nojimlad.
Their weight room floor is made of "Brazilian hardwood." WTF? Iowa State does a great job of being dollar-wise with the funds we have, yet still trying to jump a few steps up in this crazy arms race in college sports. If I were a recruit, I would want to know if I have everything I need to develop to my athletic potential the same at ISU as anywhere else. I think we do that. As with all of our facilities - Sukup, Bergstrom, the new track, soccer field, and softball stadium - while they're not super fancy and opulent, they do say that ISU is very serious about sports and in competing.
That isn't Oregon's football facility, it's Nike's.
Sitting here trying to compare and contrast a facility built by a collegiate athletic program with one that was built by a multi billion dollar corporation is going to cause nothing but headaches.
Sitting here trying to compare and contrast a facility built by a collegiate athletic program with one that was built by a multi billion dollar corporation is going to cause nothing but headaches.
Have seen photos of Tennessee's and it looks unreal. Believe their's cost in the 40+million range.
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Some more on the "details" involved in Oregon complex:
The locker room, coaches' offices, student-athlete cafeteria, players' lounge and meeting rooms are designed to flow together and are filled with high-tech gadgetry to enhance efficiency. The design team of ZGF Architects, Firm 151 and Hoffman Construction installed a number of unique features: The marble for the showers was imported from Italy, as was most of the building's furniture; the lockers (which are fully ventilated to eliminate lingering odors) are from Germany and feature coded keypads and a top shelf mounted with shoulder pads and a helmet that spring-boards toward the player; the seamless white floors in the locker room and cafeteria are poured from terrazzo, a composite that resists infection; the specific color pantones of Oregon's uniforms are threaded throughout the building (with green stitching in the chairs used by defensive players and coaches and yellow stitching in the chairs used by the offensive guys); the black-glass walls of the meeting rooms serve as writing boards; several other walls are lined in Nike football leather; the chairs of the auditoriums (yes, there are two) are done in Ferrari leather.
Altogether, the complex promises to be a major draw for recruits. The facade is black glass meant to cloak the building in mystery while also providing bright sunlit spaces within; the designers call it "sunglasses." With this building, Oregon has declared without reservation that it is indeed "the University of Nike.'' Knight and his wife Penny, who declined to reveal the cost behind the project, maintained control of its design and construction in order to meet their standards before deeding ownership to the school. Just last Friday, Knight's right-hand man, Howard Slusher, the former agent, was unhappy with minor scuffs on the black slate floor (imported from Portugal) of the lobby. So, every piece was scheduled to be torn up and replaced.
The locker room, coaches' offices, student-athlete cafeteria, players' lounge and meeting rooms are designed to flow together and are filled with high-tech gadgetry to enhance efficiency. The design team of ZGF Architects, Firm 151 and Hoffman Construction installed a number of unique features: The marble for the showers was imported from Italy, as was most of the building's furniture; the lockers (which are fully ventilated to eliminate lingering odors) are from Germany and feature coded keypads and a top shelf mounted with shoulder pads and a helmet that spring-boards toward the player; the seamless white floors in the locker room and cafeteria are poured from terrazzo, a composite that resists infection; the specific color pantones of Oregon's uniforms are threaded throughout the building (with green stitching in the chairs used by defensive players and coaches and yellow stitching in the chairs used by the offensive guys); the black-glass walls of the meeting rooms serve as writing boards; several other walls are lined in Nike football leather; the chairs of the auditoriums (yes, there are two) are done in Ferrari leather.
Altogether, the complex promises to be a major draw for recruits. The facade is black glass meant to cloak the building in mystery while also providing bright sunlit spaces within; the designers call it "sunglasses." With this building, Oregon has declared without reservation that it is indeed "the University of Nike.'' Knight and his wife Penny, who declined to reveal the cost behind the project, maintained control of its design and construction in order to meet their standards before deeding ownership to the school. Just last Friday, Knight's right-hand man, Howard Slusher, the former agent, was unhappy with minor scuffs on the black slate floor (imported from Portugal) of the lobby. So, every piece was scheduled to be torn up and replaced.
I'm going via the in-laws but yeah, I think it was right around 45 mil. I know Iowa's is close to 55 mil. I got to tour it this spring - at least the part that is done. Its very pedestrian - looks like a library to be honest. Considering what they are spending, they could have gotten more out of it. I saw Wisky's in 2007 after their upgrade in 2005. Stadium was decent, indoor facility was very meh. I think they are getting an update very soon.
