Big Red Business: The best ideas for Nebraska’s new football cathedral

From the time construction crews started scraping dirt to make way for Clemson’s new football training facility, it was clear that the building would be a combination of bigness and beauty with a mix of frivolity thrown in.

The Allen N. Reeves Football Complex -- a rock throw away from Clemson’s Memorial Stadium and practice fields -- is a must-see attraction.

Just like the Tigers’ football team, the Reeves Football Complex carries a No. 1 ranking in 2019. It’s the top college football training facility in the country, according to recent surveys and lists put together by various different media outlets.

The $55 million facility, which opened in 2017 on land that once housed two soccer practice fields, features all the training room bells and whistles. There’s the 23,000 square-foot weight room, lap pools, water therapy tubs, meeting rooms, the 8,000-square-foot locker room, and biometric scanners that help develop each Clemson football players’ daily food intake based on their current weight.

But what really sets it apart from the pack are the entertainment and relaxation features for athletes, including a Wiffle ball field, two bowling lanes, a miniature golf course and a 30-foot-long metal slide in the back of the building that is the quickest way to get from the second floor to the practice field.

No wonder why a recent report described the building as “basically a player’s theme park in rural South Carolina.”

All of that, and much more, has caught the eye of athletic directors around the country, including Nebraska’s Bill Moos who is contemplating whether it is time to expand or replace the Tom & Nancy Osborne Athletic Complex hard by Memorial Stadium.

Some Nebraska athletics officials reportedly toured the Reeves complex when the basketball team played at Clemson this past season.

While a facility upgrade has not been publicly announced, Moos has gone as far as saying that he’d want to borrow the best ideas from some of the best training complexes around the country. He mentioned Clemson and Texas A&M, among others.

With that in mind, HuskerOnline took a closer look at what makes Clemson and Texas A&M’s projects stand out, along with planning details that helped push the projects forward. The Aggies training complex was ranked No. 3 on a recent list.

HuskerOnline also looked at Arizona State’s new facility, which was constructed under the guiding hand of former Nebraska associate athletic director for football Tim Cassidy.

Thad Turnipseed, Clemson’s director of football recruiting and external affairs, has some simple advice for Nebraska: Design and build your football complex for the players, not as a recruiting Taj Mahal.

Sure, a shiny new building is a great recruiting tool and helps you keep up with the competition. But the design, the space flow and functionality, the equipment -- indeed, the entire approach to the facility -- needs to be done in the best interests of the student-athletes, Turnipseed said.

That was the blueprint espoused by head football coach Dabo Swinney when the Reeves complex was in the planning stages.

“The building’s great, the building’s nice, but it is not about the building,” Turnipseed said. “We built the building to make all the programming better to serve the players. We wanted the best therapy room, the best training room….”

“You’ve got to understand the ‘why part.’ If not, you are just spinning your wheels.”

Turnipseed is a source of wisdom for all the nitty-gritty details that go into constructing college football training facilities, which cost millions of dollars and take lots of cajoling to get donors, campus administrators, and legislators on board.

A former lineman and one of Swinney’s teammates at Alabama, Turnipseed has built an impressive resume in construction management. Hired by Alabama’s athletic department, Turnipseed played a key role in designing and overseeing more than $200 million in athletics projects, including $40 million in improvements at Bryant-Denny Stadium and other football facilities.

Six years ago, he left Nick Saban to reunite with Swinney at Clemson. Turnipseed’s first big project was the new football training complex. He had lots of land to work with, and a picturesque setting to incorporate into the design.

As part of his due diligence, Turnipseed toured more than 30 football facilities around the country -- though not Nebraska’s -- and was told by Swinney to “take the best from each place.”

Clemson modeled the locker room after Oklahoma’s, some of the training space after Tennessee, the weight room after Alabama, and the Tiger Paw logo and branding that permeates the building after Wyoming.

The metal slide? That was an idea Swinney got from Google’s headquarters.

The 140,000 square-foot, two-story building took nine months to design and review, and 13 months to build. It’s about twice the size of the former training complex.

Swinney personally raised about $17 million in three weeks to get the project going, Turnipseed said. Revenue bonds covered the rest, with repayment coming from athletics revenue.

“It has more bells and whistles, and is the most functional in the country,” Turnipseed said. “We hit a home run.”

The entertainment zones were incorporated, partly as a way for players to relax and have fun together, bond as a team, and to keep them on campus and hopefully away from potential trouble.

Turnipseed said the project couldn’t have been completed successfully without buy-in from the university and the construction, design and architectural team.

The university “allowed us to have full control….football guys building a football facility,” Turnipseed said. “When you live it, you understand everything” that needs to go into the building.

For example, the dining and nutrition staff provided input on the cafeteria layout and snack bars, the strength and conditioning coaches advised on the flooring, lighting and layout of the weight room, and sports science and medicine team consulted on injury recovery features. Thought also went into reducing the amount of time players had to ride elevators or take the stairs to get to meetings.

The locker room fits 120 players and was built to include steam rooms and a cold tub that can accommodate up to 60 persons. There are also plenty of flat-screen televisions.

While the bones of the complex were built to last for decades, Clemson is not through expanding and tinkering. Plans are underway for a 4,000 square-foot addition for sports science work.

“We’re always looking at improving,” Turnipseed said.

Kevin Hurley has been through three renovations of Texas A&M’s Bright Football Complex located in the south endzone of Kyle Stadium.

As senior associate athletic director in charge of facilities, events, and construction, the Creighton University graduate worked closely with architects, contractors, the athletic director, coaches, and players, to make sure the Aggies had the biggest and best first and foremost in Texas.

The first renovation, about ten years ago, resulted in the expansion of the front door and lobby area. Two years later, the nutrition center was added. It can accommodate about 400 student-athletes -- not just football players -- at any one time, and was modeled after Nebraska’s.

“Nebraska had people who understood food and nutrition,” Hurley said. “They paid attention” to what players needed.

The final renovation -- completed in 2014 at a cost of about $21 million raised privately through donors -- involved expansion and improvements to the locker room, training room, rehab center, and coaches offices. “It’s a one-stop shop,” Hurley said.

The 68,000 square foot Bright complex features recessed LED lighting throughout, personal Twitter handles and video monitors at each of the 125 players’ lockers, a hydrotherapy pool, and television displays above each sink in the restrooms. The building also houses the academic center and football staff offices.

One report called the facility “nothing short of spectacular.”

Hurley said the design was driven to use every bit of space, which meant blowing out lots of walls to make the building more functional. There were major technology upgrades and lots of finishing touches.

“We have tons of graphics in the hallways highlighting the history of the program,” he said. “We tried to use every space to get our message across” about Texas A&M’s heritage and culture.

A&M officials toured many college and professional football facilities, including Nebraska, Alabama, Oregon, Oregon State, Oklahoma State, the Dallas Cowboys and the Houston Texans, before setting pencil to paper

Hurley said the hydrotherapy area and training room was modeled after Alabama’s, while the player’s lounge on the lower floor of the football complex was influenced by Oregon State’s.

What’s next?

“The shell of the building should last 100 years,” Hurley said. “But every five or 10 years, you need to go through the modification process. You never stop looking.”

If Nebraska wants some outside advice on a new football training complex, they can turn to a credible, familiar face.

Tim Cassidy not only helped in the design of the Osborne football complex but he’s played pivotal roles in similar projects at Texas A&M and Arizona State. He’s widely recognized as one of the top football administrators in the country.

At ASU, Cassidy not only helped secure donations from benefactors for the Sun Devil’s new Student-Athlete Facility, but he also was involved in the design of the $57 million project. The nearly 120,000-square-foot building, on the north side of Sun Devil Stadium, opened in time for the 2017 season.

The three-story facility features a treatment area with underwater treadmills to help joint recovery, a plunge pool just off the locker room, hot tubs, a barber shop, fueling stations, multiple classrooms for each player’s position, and artwork of the late Pat Tillman, the former Sun Devil star and war hero.

It’s a vast upgrade from the previous training complex, which had become somewhat of a liability from a recruiting standpoint, said Cassidy, the senior associate athletic director for football operations. Moreover, the building could no longer accommodate the needs of 26 varsity teams.

“Space-wise, it was being taxed a bunch,” Cassidy said. “We had to manage 26 sports for a building that was designed for five or six.”

The new complex has all the necessities, though maybe not the glitz of a Clemson or Texas A&M. The two-level 9,813-square-foot weight room, which features lots of open space and natural lighting, was patterned somewhat after Nebraska’s facility.

“When we built this the design was more about making it a teaching facility,” Cassidy said.

Arizona State has also invested heavily in training facilities for other varsity teams.

While the complex is primarily used now for football, the building is open to different organizations and sports on campus for meetings and other activities.

“That was a key selling point” in getting the green light for the project, Cassidy said. “It’s not just for football.” That’s why the building, sitting in sun-drenched Tempe, is called the Student-Athlete Facility.

For that matter, he added, the entire stadium can be used for different events on campus rather than just seven or eight times a year for home football games. There’s a movie of the week on the stadium’s jumbo scoreboard.

What feature got left on the cutting room floor that Cassidy would still like to have? A 35-to-40 yard agility field, said Cassidy. It costs $600,000.

Steve Rosen covers the business of sports for HuskerOnline.com. Questions, comments, story ideas? Reach Steve at sbrosen1030@gmail.com.