Move over Clemson, Oregon and Alabama ... Northwestern's ridiculous new practice facility is on another level
Pete Thamel
Yahoo SportsMay 23, 2018, 5:08 PM
Some excerpts:
...The new $270 million athletic facility, Ryan Fieldhouse and Walter Athletics Center, ... opens next month. The facility looks as if a rendering from “The Jetsons” dropped on the shores of Lake Michigan, with 45-foot floor-to-ceiling windows that run the expanse of the entire practice field overlooking the water.
Fitzgerald is entering his 23rd season as a player, assistant or head coach at Northwestern, all of which have been housed in a facility that would be considered mediocre in the MAC.
The fact that Northwestern, which for decades alternated between being a Big Ten punch line and punching bag, now leads the college football facility race can be considered one of the biggest upsets in the history of college athletics. When the Wildcats move in next month, they’ll have the nicest athletic facility in all of college football. The comparisons are a bit askew, as five other varsity teams will also occupy the 425,000 square feet of the entire athletic center. It will serve as the hub for the department’s administration, medical care and academic services and also host intramurals and campus events.
But I’ve been in virtually every football building of note in America, witnessing all the Ferrari leather, barber chairs and nap rooms from Clemson to Eugene to Tuscaloosa. In terms of size, spectacle and spending, Northwestern has sprinted past the biggest names in the facilities arms race.
Phil Knight should stare with envy. Nick Saban should hop his private jet to take notes. Dabo Swinney should start another round of fundraising, as Clemson’s ode to extravagance – replete with a slide, mini-golf course and bowling lanes – cost more than $200 million less. Oregon’s football palace – considered the gold standard until Northwestern – cost just $86 million, or $186 million below Northwestern’s multi-sport palace. The only thing comparable in the football world is the billion-dollar facility that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones built in Frisco, Texas. And while they’re difficult to compare, Northwestern’s beach-front location trumps the aesthetics of Jones’ landlocked strip malls....
In the collegiate space, Northwestern’s facility makes the University of Texas look three decades behind, sends taunting echoes to the facilities at Notre Dame and out-Hollywoods both USC and UCLA.
The opening of Ryan Fieldhouse, though, comes at a particularly captivating time for Fitzgerald’s program. Northwestern football is coming off a 10-win season, and Northwestern’s 27 wins the past three years rank as the best stretch in school history. It also puts them No. 15 overall in college football in wins over that time, a sign of perhaps a new standard now that the setting is catching up with the results.
Northwestern returns star quarterback and all-time win leader Clayton Thorson, who projects to be ready for the season coming off ACL rehab. They also host Michigan, Nebraska, Notre Dame and Wisconsin this season for what school officials are billing as the best home schedule in school history. “We’ve been a winner,” Fitzgerald says during the tour. “Now this is a commitment to becoming a championship contender.”
Fitzgerald had say in every phase of designing the building and boasts about the choreographed flow from locker room to meeting rooms to the practice field. “How can we squeeze every second out of the 20 hours [players are allowed to dedicate to football]?” he says of the building philosophy. “That was the whole process behind it.”
There are curtains to diminish glare by remote control, video cameras to tape practice run by joystick from inside the building and a massive room dedicated to virtual reality screens for the Wildcat quarterbacks. There are 188 seats in the team meeting room (up from 120), 31 coaching lockers (up from 14) and an extra set of lockers for the program’s NFL alumni who can train there. There’s a barber chair, a hot/cold tub that seats 40 and a nutrition hub that includes a kitchen to teach players to cook once they move off campus.
The full story: https://sports.yahoo.com/move-clems...-unparalleled-college-football-220858185.html
CLICK ON THE IMAGE FOR A LARGER VIEW
The soon to be completed Northwestern weight room in the new Walter Athletic Center on the shores of Lake Michigan
Pete Thamel
Yahoo SportsMay 23, 2018, 5:08 PM
Some excerpts:
...The new $270 million athletic facility, Ryan Fieldhouse and Walter Athletics Center, ... opens next month. The facility looks as if a rendering from “The Jetsons” dropped on the shores of Lake Michigan, with 45-foot floor-to-ceiling windows that run the expanse of the entire practice field overlooking the water.
Fitzgerald is entering his 23rd season as a player, assistant or head coach at Northwestern, all of which have been housed in a facility that would be considered mediocre in the MAC.
The fact that Northwestern, which for decades alternated between being a Big Ten punch line and punching bag, now leads the college football facility race can be considered one of the biggest upsets in the history of college athletics. When the Wildcats move in next month, they’ll have the nicest athletic facility in all of college football. The comparisons are a bit askew, as five other varsity teams will also occupy the 425,000 square feet of the entire athletic center. It will serve as the hub for the department’s administration, medical care and academic services and also host intramurals and campus events.
But I’ve been in virtually every football building of note in America, witnessing all the Ferrari leather, barber chairs and nap rooms from Clemson to Eugene to Tuscaloosa. In terms of size, spectacle and spending, Northwestern has sprinted past the biggest names in the facilities arms race.
Phil Knight should stare with envy. Nick Saban should hop his private jet to take notes. Dabo Swinney should start another round of fundraising, as Clemson’s ode to extravagance – replete with a slide, mini-golf course and bowling lanes – cost more than $200 million less. Oregon’s football palace – considered the gold standard until Northwestern – cost just $86 million, or $186 million below Northwestern’s multi-sport palace. The only thing comparable in the football world is the billion-dollar facility that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones built in Frisco, Texas. And while they’re difficult to compare, Northwestern’s beach-front location trumps the aesthetics of Jones’ landlocked strip malls....
In the collegiate space, Northwestern’s facility makes the University of Texas look three decades behind, sends taunting echoes to the facilities at Notre Dame and out-Hollywoods both USC and UCLA.
The opening of Ryan Fieldhouse, though, comes at a particularly captivating time for Fitzgerald’s program. Northwestern football is coming off a 10-win season, and Northwestern’s 27 wins the past three years rank as the best stretch in school history. It also puts them No. 15 overall in college football in wins over that time, a sign of perhaps a new standard now that the setting is catching up with the results.
Northwestern returns star quarterback and all-time win leader Clayton Thorson, who projects to be ready for the season coming off ACL rehab. They also host Michigan, Nebraska, Notre Dame and Wisconsin this season for what school officials are billing as the best home schedule in school history. “We’ve been a winner,” Fitzgerald says during the tour. “Now this is a commitment to becoming a championship contender.”
Fitzgerald had say in every phase of designing the building and boasts about the choreographed flow from locker room to meeting rooms to the practice field. “How can we squeeze every second out of the 20 hours [players are allowed to dedicate to football]?” he says of the building philosophy. “That was the whole process behind it.”
There are curtains to diminish glare by remote control, video cameras to tape practice run by joystick from inside the building and a massive room dedicated to virtual reality screens for the Wildcat quarterbacks. There are 188 seats in the team meeting room (up from 120), 31 coaching lockers (up from 14) and an extra set of lockers for the program’s NFL alumni who can train there. There’s a barber chair, a hot/cold tub that seats 40 and a nutrition hub that includes a kitchen to teach players to cook once they move off campus.
The full story: https://sports.yahoo.com/move-clems...-unparalleled-college-football-220858185.html
CLICK ON THE IMAGE FOR A LARGER VIEW
The soon to be completed Northwestern weight room in the new Walter Athletic Center on the shores of Lake Michigan
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