The college football season kicks off in less than three weeks. You probably hear, nonstop during the fall, how college football is "big business". There is no more visible tangible representation of the revenue generating power of college athletics, football in particular, than the athletics department buildings on the university campuses of some of America's biggest college football programs.
Elena Verlee of
Online Colleges submitted this article for your enjoyment today. The
original article is available on the blog at
http://www.onlinecolleges.net. Please note that my alma mater, Louisiana State University, appears on this list. Geaux Tigers!
The 10 Most Impressive Athletic Buildings in the NCAA
Once upon a time, college athletes got by with a few dumbbells, a medicine ball, and some of those
vibrating belts. Today, with sports dollars up to their eyeballs and stadiums as high-tech as they can get for the immediate future, colleges are turning their attention toward crafting some sweet pads in which student athletes may kick it. These multi-million dollar athletic buildings become recruiting tools in their own right, for good reason. These 10 are some of the most impressive in the country.
Architecturally and aesthetically, the Jaqua Center is in a class by itself. Funded by Nike exec Phil Knight for the astronomical (
and controversial) amount of $41.7 million, the Center is a design masterpiece. From the futuristic metal and glass construction on the exterior to the white oak floors, multi-colored lighting, and laser-etched names dotting the interior, “impressive” is putting it mildly. Other highlights scattered throughout the building include underwater treadmills, cold-and-hot tubs, a waterfall, a juice bar, a lecture hall with 114 leather chairs each individually wired for power and Internet, and lockers
reportedly valued at $26,000
apiece.
2) Mal M. Moore Athletic Facility, University of Alabama:
The Crimson Tide has been one of the best football programs in the country in recent years, and it has an athletic facility to match. Named for former Alabama player and current AD, the Mal M. Moore building has been renovated twice in the last decade to incorporate accoutrements like granite floors and mahogany paneling in the
Hall of Champions, and leather recliners and pool and ping pong tables in the
football players’ lounge. Rehabilitation pools accompany the 20,000-square-foot strength and conditioning center. From the plush head coach’s suite, Nick Saban overlooks it all.
3) Woody Hayes Athletic Center, Ohio State:
A recent $20 million restoration project has reaffirmed OSU as having one of the most impressive athletic buildings in America. The locker rooms, medical treatment areas, equipment room, and strength training area all got updates. The latter is now a 13,000-square-foot gym. The place has hydrotherapy pools, a racquetball court, and an indoor practice football field. There is also this stunning view of the northeast entrance to the
Les Wexner Football Complex, where visitors can view the Championship Wall and wall of NFL teams with Buckeye representation on them.
4) Bright Football Complex, Texas A&M:
While the building is ostensibly for “student-athletes of all kinds,” football is king both here in the South and on the A&M campus. Conveniently located at the south end of Kyle Field, the Bright building is a
125,000-square-foot, $27 million beauty. More than 130 solid oak lockers populate the 6,500-square-foot locker room. Players can kick back in the players’ lounge, complete with pool tables, flat screens, and leather couches. And when it comes time to train, there’s 15,000 square feet worth of gym equipment to get athletes into fightin’ Texas Aggie shape.
5) Football Operations Center, Louisiana State:
There’s no other way to say it: this place is slick. The $15 million Football Operations Center comprises a climate-controlled, SportExe-turfed indoor football field; a 54,000-square-foot academic center complete with 1,000-seat auditorium; spacious coaches’ and player meeting rooms; the “Captain’s Lounge” with 72-inch TV; a 23,000-square-foot athletic training center with X-ray room and hydrotherapy pools; and more. In the lobby, just past the life-size Bengal Tiger statue standing guard outside, LSU’s spoils of victory like Billy Cannon’s Heisman and the 2003 BCS Coaches’ Trophy are proudly displayed as proof that LSU’s commitment to athletics has paid big dividends.
6) Tom and Nancy Osborne Athletic Complex, Nebraska:
The Cornhuskers spared no expense updating this athletic building, which now boasts some of the finest facilities in the country. A 40-foot waterfall starts things off right in the lobby. Football players get inspiration in the Major Trophy Winners Hallway on their way to the state-of-the-art Ndamukong Suh Strength and Conditioning Center or the swanky locker room, where each player’s solid maple locker is equipped with an iPad. During down time you’ll find them playing ping pong or pool in the red-themed Players’ Lounge. A quick jog through the skybridge takes them to the Hawks Championship Indoor Center, and at game time it’s a run down the red carpet and out onto the field of Memorial Stadium.
7) James W. “Bill” Heavener Football Complex, University of Florida:
Coach Urban Meyer fought for a top-flight facility to help Gator recruiting, and though he’s now gone, this fantastic, $28 million building remains. Granite pavers and stainless steel plaques honor former players on the approach to the building, and a 15-foot bronze gator reminds passersby what campus they’re on. The blue and orange of the Hall of Champions in the two-story lobby reinforce that thought. Next door, recruits are schmoozed in the comfortable Gator Room. The 25,000-square-foot weight room boasts a 50-yard turf area and basically a machine for strengthening every muscle in the human body. There are even two stations for players to take 360-degree video of themselves, which they can then review on high-def TVs to perfect their form.
8) Guglielmino Athletics Complex, Notre Dame:
A shiny, metallic athletic building would look out of place among the Gothic architecture of Notre Dame’s campus, but with its beautiful brick facade with white trim, the stately Guglielmino Athletics Complex fits right in. From the balcony of the Morse Recruiting Lounge with its vaulted ceilings, students have an excellent view of a two-story mural by the entrance. But “The Gug” is equally impressive in function as in form. The 96,000 square feet contain a 25,000-square-foot fitness center, the Loftus Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation Center with exercise pools and underwater treadmill, and a 45-yard indoor practice turf with accompanying 50-yard track.
9) Lee Roy Selmon Athletics Center, University of Southern Florida:
As of May 2004, USF student athletes have been training, studying, eating, and relaxing in style in this $15 million building. The architecture impresses with its curved, multi-tiered green roof and 104,000 square foot size. Inside there are 10,000 square feet of strength and condition equipment for strengthening muscles, and an Academic Enrichment Center for strengthening minds. USF ups the ante on underwater tech in its pools, equipping its Hydroworx 1000 pool with not just a treadmill but a computer monitoring system with computer control console. Soon a Hall of Fame will be completed, which the Bulls sports teams are hoping to begin filling in the coming years.
10) Arthur B. Edge Intercollegiate Athletics Center, Georgia Tech:
Georgia Tech is thought by many to have the
nation’s best all-around athletic facilities, and the Arthur B. Edge building plays a big factor in that accolade. Attached to Bobby Dodd Stadium, the 65,000-square-foot center impresses from the first step inside, as a glass atrium towers several stories above the lobby. Visitors can view the “Circle of Champions” display there or proceed to the George W. Mathews Jr. Athletic Heritage Center to see more school history, including a movie theater for highlight films. In addition to the training facilities for the athletes, Edge also houses a conference center, a large academic area, a dining hall, and a meditation room.
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What a horrible irony that Penn State’s alma mater includes the words, “May no act of ours bring shame.” For more than 15 years, coaching assistant Jerry Sandusky disgraced the school by sexually abusing boys placed in his care. The resulting embarrassment enveloped once-beloved head coach Joe Paterno, the Penn State football program, the NCAA, and every fan of college football in America. “JoePa” did not live to see his statue removed from its place near Beaver Stadium and forklifted into storage, or his record vacated of more than 100 wins, knocking him from atop the list of winningest college football coaches ever. For the NCAA, having such a man in the record books was clearly too humiliating.
Whether college athletes should be paid for their services is a debate worth having. Nevertheless, as the rule stands (and as it stood in the early 2000s), accepting nearly $290,000 in cash and gifts is $290,000 more than players are allowed to accept. USC star running back Reggie Bush was certainly not the first to take people’s offers of limo rides and free housing, but he was the first to go on to win the Heisman Trophy. In a huge black eye for USC and the Heisman Trust, Bush opted to relinquish the award before it was snatched out of his soiled hands, the first time the award has been returned.
In the wake of Penn State’s devastating NCAA punishment, many are reminded of another name in the annals of college sports embarrassments: Southern Methodist University. Although Penn State will retain a crippled football program, SMU’s entire 1987 and 1988 seasons were canceled when it was discovered players had been paid thousands of dollars out of a slush fund with the full knowledge of people like former Texas governor and chairman of SMU’s board of governors Bill Clements and AD Bob Hitch. Ironically, Penn State was among the schools who raided SMU’s football roster for players. As a result of the death penalty, SMU’s program took two decades to recover, Clements’ political career was killed, and the Southwest Conference had one of the final nails put in its coffin.
Players accepting money for playing their best is one thing; players taking money for making errors and helping bookies beat the spread is a whole other can of worms. In 1951, a cloud was cast over NCAA basketball when a point-shaving scandal involving seven schools and 32 players came to light. What began with the arrest of three of the stars of City College New York’s NIT-winning 1950 team for conspiring with gangsters to fix games soon spread to NYU, Long Island University, the University of Kentucky, and elsewhere. The scandal remains one of the worst black eyes in college basketball history.
Jim “The Sweater Vest” Tressel was so ensconced as head football coach at Ohio State that when asked if Tressel was going to be fired, OSU president Gordon Gee responded, “No, are you kidding? I’m just hoping the coach doesn’t dismiss me.” Clearly Tressel’s 106-22 record with OSU had brought him significant power, power enough that, when informed his players were selling memorabilia to a known drug dealer in exchange for tattoos, he sat on the knowledge for eight months in 2011. Then he lied to investigators about how long he knew the truth. A red-faced OSU tried to keep Tressel’s chastening to a five-game suspension and $250,000 fine, but ultimately bowed to public pressure and asked for his resignation.
The thought process while watching the clip of this embarrassing moment in college basketball history goes something like this: ‘OK, that was a pretty hard foul. Oh, nice, that player is going to help him up OH, NOT THE GROIN!’ Angered at an impending loss to their Big Ten rivals, Minnesota initiated a street fight by punching and kneeing Ohio State player Luke Witte and then stomping his head while he was on the floor. The crowd even booed him as he was helped off the court on his way to the hospital. The governor of Ohio called it a “public mugging.” Two Minnesota players were suspended for the season, and dunking before games — showboating that the NCAA believed attributed to the hostile environment — was banned.
To call this Miami football’s all-time low is saying a lot, considering their history. But on the night of Oct. 14, 2006, the country watched in disgust as Hurricane players goaded Florida International’s Golden Panthers into a fight with taunting and showing off. FIU took the bait. A Golden Panther tackled a holder and punched him, and all hell broke loose. Miami players took their helmets off and used them as weapons. An injured FIU player swung a crutch at some Hurricanes. A ‘Cane body-slammed a Panther. Players were stomped and kicked in the head. State troopers had to help separate the teams. More than 30 players were later suspended. Even a TV commentator, former Hurricane Lamar Thomas, was fired for the embarrassing in-game comments, “You come into our house, you should get your behind kicked.”
Minnesota basketball managed to go almost 30 years after the 1972 brawl before falling on their faces in front of the country all over again. On the morning of the team’s first-round game in the 1999 NCAA tournament, news broke of a former academic advisor claiming to have written 400 papers for Gopher basketball players over a period of five years, with head coach Clem Haskins’ total knowledge. Haskins later admitted paying the woman to do so and was subsequently fired and banned from coaching college basketball until 2007. Some supporters wished he would have fought harder to clear his name, but he correctly decided that would have only dragged the school’s name further through the mud than it had already traveled.
When Nevin Shapiro was imprisoned in 2010 for participating in a nearly $1 billion Ponzi scheme, more than a few people in the college sports world must have started to worry. Such worry is warranted. Eight players on the Miami Hurricanes football team have already been suspended for accepting gifts from this persona non grata, but according to Shapiro, dozens more players are involved. He says from 2002 to 2010 he hooked up at least 72 college players with money, prostitutes, yacht and limo rides, tackle bounties (which are currently roiling the NFL), jewelry, and travel. Shapiro is peeved at his predicament and has vowed he will take Miami football down with him.
Three, six, and 15. These are the numbers of Rick Pitino’s most notable achievements: three schools led to the Final Four, six NCAA Tournament regional championships, and 15 seconds of sex with extortionist Karen Cunagin Sypher. In one of Louisville basketball’s most embarrassing moments, and certainly the most embarrassing moment of Pitino’s storied career, the coach had an extremely brief sexual encounter with the wife of his equipment manager in a restaurant booth in 2003. The woman then tried to milk Pitino for $10 million. Pitino called the cops on her but in so doing opened himself up to some humiliating courtroom interrogation and accusations of rape by Sypher. Ultimately he was vindicated, but not until adding another sad chapter to the college sports history books.
