| NEWS Alabama Has Set Bar High In Football-Only Facility

Max

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Alabama has had a “football only” facility for so long that it’s hard to remember what the original building looked like. Huge additions and renovations have been possible because of innovative thinking and a commitment to the cash cow of Crimson Tide athletics. New to the facility this year is a dining hall and expanded recruiting room (“room” being equivalent to a hotel banquet room).

Any discussion of Alabama’s Mal Moore Athletic Building usually includes the waterfall in the training room, but that’s not a gimmick. It’s a part of the overall health program.

The players’ lounge in the building does have the attractions (games, etc.) that are not football related, but it’s mostly about business; the business of recruiting.
There are offices for athletics department administrators, from Athletics Director Greg Byrne and his many associate and assistant ADs and others, and for the many involved in football, from Head Coach Nick Saban and all of his assistants, analysts, video operations, etc.

Prospects are constantly exposed to Crimson Tide success and tradition. The Hall of Champions features each of Bama’s national championships, bowl games, conference championships, Hall of Fame members, Heisman (and other) trophies, blow-up photos (including the dozens of Sports Illustrated covers that have featured Alabama), etc.

There are the meeting rooms – the giant theater for the entire team, the offense only, defense only, and then the position rooms.

The extensive medical complex, nutrition areas, practice locker rooms, equipment room, and extending to the weight room and indoor practice facility, all adjacent to the outdoor practice fields makes it as comprehensive as can be imagined.

Expect, though, more imagination. It’s the nature of the arms race.

Indeed, imagination at Alabama started before the first shovel of dirt was moved. Former Athletics Director Paul Bryant had Jim Goostree, Alabama’s trainer but also involved in facilities, begin work on the project, which was envisioned as a one-story building. By the time it was time to build, Ray Perkins was AD and the plans were upgraded to a two-story building. And it has expanded with the granting of seemingly every football wish.

In short, Alabama has set the bar high in a football-only facility.

Over the years in many areas, Alabama has been out front in facilities. Bryant Hall was built to house and feed Crimson Tide football and basketball players in the 1960s and immediately dubbed the “Bear Bryant Hilton.” Many Southeastern Conference teams were decades behind The University in constructing football only buildings.

It is the nature of being out front that others come along later with everything that has gone before plus some. And as a leader, it has been incumbent on Bama’s athletics administrators not to be satisfied with the status quo, but always to monitor the need for facilities upgrades. Although Mal Moore, the athletics director for whom the building was named, may be remembered by most for bringing Nick Saban to Bama as head football coach, he also had an extraordinary vision of facilities improvements and ambitious program of building and renovation.

Across the state, Auburn has a new athletics director, Allen Greene, who has announced that he is going to bring to fruition a football facility, something that has been talked about there for many years. AU makes no bones about the first hurdle, which is to finance the facility with donations. That’s not just at Auburn. Athletics facilities are big budget items and there will likely be some sticker shock when Auburn gets going on its facility, as has been the case at Alabama and elsewhere.

We have seen the figure of $65 million. Our first thought to that was a hearty laugh.

Greene, who went to Auburn from Buffalo, has said he wants the best football-only facility in the SEC, if not the nation. “We want to set ourselves apart from our peers,” he said. Starting from scratch, that is ambitious.

Phillip Marshall, senior editor at AuburnUndercover, is certainly wired in to what’s going on at Auburn. He said Greene wants a football complex “that separates Auburn from the competition, not so much with lazy rivers and slides and putting greens as in ways that support athletes on a level above.”

Considering what is out there, it’s difficult to imagine what will “support athletes on a level above,” or even what that means.

What’s not difficult to imagine is that whatever it is, the competition will try to find a way to raise the money and then match and exceed.

And so it goes.

Seemingly every football wish has been granted in Alabama’s Mal Moore Athletic Building
 
i've been inside that building. it is, indeed, very nice. we didn't get to see the WHOLE thing (some parts are off-limits unless you're a coach/staff member or player), but what we did get to see was impressive.
 
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