Oregon and their sugar daddy, Nike Founder Phil Knight, released the first pictures of their football Death Star and training facility. It is a reasonable 125,000-square feet and only cost $68 million to complete. Over the past few months, high-profile programs like USC and Alabama have opened new football facilities, but those are nothing compared to the Evil Empire-level building at Oregon. It just goes to show that amateur athletics is really about the students and the sculpting of well-rounded young people. I’m sure this facility also came with a note from the university that said, “No pressure.”
Let’s take a quick tour of the new facility through pictures posted on GoDucks:
First, when a visitor or recruit walks into the facility, they will be welcomed by a subtle wall of 64 total 55-inch TV screens that can show the same image or 64 different things.
Next, let’s take a tour of where the players will spend most of their time. Here is the new locker room which looks like a robot storage facility. Oregon does know that white everything combined with football players isn’t a great match, right? I hope they have a cleaning crew on speed dial.
Each individual locker has double-doors that open and slide into the locker itself, breaking away any barriers that players had between lockers. GoDucks says it is “another way to promote camaraderie.” It looks to me like a program that hates personal space.
Next, we have some amenities. A huge, wide-open weight room with views of the practice field. The facility also has a barbershop, a hot-tub grotto for coaches only, a player’s game room, a cafeteria with a sign that reads “Eat Your Enemies” in neon with the logos of every Pac-12 team above it and a 170-seat, two story theatre that has a projection screen, which looks out onto Autzen Stadium when the screen is retracted.
Here’s the weight room. It also has an electronic running track. I don’t what that means either.
Finally, some of the more administrative parts of the facility. New head coach Mark Helfrich’s office is as big as some people’s houses.
The War Room may actually house nuclear launch codes and the information pertaining to Area 51 and the Moon Landing. It also has walls that are dry-erase boards. In black, of course. And six 80-inch monitors because coaches need those.
And last, but not least, the Press Room. While it looks like a room that would contain a Hunger Games press conference, it will house normal college football press conferences and postgame interviews. It also features four “confessional booths” in which journalists can interview players and coaches one-on-one. It also has a trapdoor feature under any chair so that Phil Knight can banish any reporter who asks a question that he does not like.
