And let me first say, they are incredibly impressive. I've heard about them over and over from recruits all June and being able to see everything for myself was very eye-opening for a number of reasons. It's all connected and essentially has anything that a student athlete could need all in one spot. We'll have a ton of pictures coming from all the individual thing on the tour thanks to
@Mog but wanted to outline some of the things.
--The Hall of Traditions is now in the front of the football facility and it's a really open space with a lot of tributes to what has happened in the past but room to add more in the future. A couple things that caught my attention was the build your own uniform virtual platform which allows you to cycle through the jerseys on a virtual screen that projects to pick your favorite combinations. The second was there is platform with footballs that you can touch and each one will make the big screen show highlights of an individual game. We were treated to the highlights of the Fiesta Bowl win over Oklahoma.
--There are going to be students stationed at the front of the Hall of Traditions that are going to be able to show people all the things going on and lead them on tours.
--There are multiple themes such as gold and blue, coal and there are gold pathways that signal where recruits are led on tours.
--There are graphics, videos and photo opportunities all throughout the facility. It was essentially built as a way to capture amazing photos for recruits on visits. For example, the flying WV that you see in all of the pictures can change multiple colors. It is a really unique feature that makes for excellent photos.
--The player lounge is incredibly impressive and features TVs and gaming stations, a barbershop, pool tables, ping pong tables, arcade pop shot basketball with flying WVs on the side, a kitchen, a sleep room with state of the art equipment to help maximize the rest time for players at the facility, a recording studio where players will be able to record music, podcasts and other things and much more. It essentially has everything you want for the players. This way it will let the players be there and provide entertainment and more and there are still areas to expand it if they are able to raise even more funding. The sleep room has the massage chairs with zero gravity, sleep pods and more with the room having the ability to dim all the way down and resemble a star-lit sky. It can hold about 15-players at a time.
--The locker room is simply incredible. It has plenty of space, enough where the entire team will meet in the middle for halftime and pre-game speeches and each player has their own ventilated locker with their pictures and a ton of room. There is unique lighting all throughout the room. The design itself is eye-catching and the video board at the front will trail off and run to the display boards on the side as you can see in the picture below. It is every bit as impressive as the pictures of it make it seem.
--Each locker has spots for a shoulder pads, a lock and key to keep personal items, helmets on gameday, their own pictures, additional storage, each one has a phone charger and each locker is ventilated for air to run through it.
--There is an additionally an NFL locker room for those former players that want to come back and workout with their own pictures and nameplates, etc.
--Outside the locker room, there is a recovery suite which has all state of the art equipment to help players get back and ready to go. Cryo-therapy, light therapy, a bod-pod, cold tanks, float tanks with 900-pounds of Epson salt with zero gravity. They have a system daily that tracks weight loss and gain by each workout as well as hydration lost and many more. It provides a weekly goal and further out. They also track sleep and many other things in order to get players healthy.
--There is a pre-fuel station which gives the players drinks, food and shakes, etc. to get them ready for workouts. It's a essentially a hydration station that is also used for post-fuel.
--The locker room has a mud-room which is essentially a smaller locker room where players will take off their pads, helmets, etc. after practice and then go through a jet spray system which will take off all the black rubber pieces from the turf and then they go into a cold tub. After that players can go through individual showers so it keeps things with odor out of the locker room. The mud room also is ventilated at each locker. Basically, it is essentially like a car wash before entering the locker room.
--The training area has a taping section, rehab area and it's all surrounded by the athletic training offices and a water area.
--There is a section where anybody on the team can put a photo of their family or why they play the game. Each and every team does this and it's called a player wall.
--There are some new things in the team meeting room, such as a college game-day section and plenty of new graphics and videos. The front of the building is incredibly impressive compared to the past and the presentation is such night and day. All new landscaping, tinted windows, speed bumps and more just to make it appealing.
--Recruits will enter in the Team Meeting Room entrance on game days and it's really decked out with graphics and information to highlight the success of the program over the years. All of the numbers are intentional to catch the attention of recruits visiting.
--There is a studio now in the Puskar Center that will essentially serve as any show that is done during the week and also the main hub for all virtual visits in recruiting. I asked Neal Brown about this and he told me that you can expect that will basically be the first step of the recruiting process moving forward. This is the studio below.
--There are individual position rooms and offense and defense position rooms. This is what they look like. They all have sound, records pertinent to the position and more.
--There also is a section for the Fifth Quarter which features all the things going on with that program. Education and alumni success on one side, and there is a picture on the stage of graduation and on the other side there is an NFL stage which are the two goals.
--In the IPF they are currently installing a new video board and sound which should be completed by August.