The Latest College Extravagance: $100 Million ‘Football Operations Centers’

The University of Oklahoma took a giant stride toward keeping up with the college football Joneses this week with the announcement that its Board of Regents had approved plans to construct a “state-of-the-art” football operations center with an estimated budget of $175 million.

It’s just the latest example of the new craze in big-time intercollegiate athletic extravagances – building $100 million+ facilities to house the locker rooms, spas, recovery rooms and meditation areas necessary to accommodate 100 or so football players on a campus with 20,000 to 30,000 students.

Oklahoma sure needed the upgrade. After all, its current football facility – the Switzer Center, named after Oklahoma’s legendary coach Barry Switzer – is five years old. It was built in 2018 as part of a $160 million stadium expansion and renovation, but it really just won’t do anymore. Maybe having to suit up in a five-year old locker room was one reason the Sooners went 6-7 last year.

University of Oklahoma Athletic Director Joe Castiglione was quoted in the Tulsa World describing the project this way, “Sometimes (the media) frame it as keeping up with the Joneses. I don’t think it’s that as much as it is that the quest to recruit the best and the brightest is as competitive as it’s ever been. And it’s an entirely new landscape. So we have to provide a comprehensive approach that makes Oklahoma the most attractive definition for the best and the brightest and do what we do best.”

Oklahoma joins a rapidly lengthening list of big-time universities deciding that spending $100 million or more for lavish, high-tech football centers is a wise investment.

As is typical with most of these projects, the university is careful to point out that the costs are being paid by private donations or athletic department money, rather than general university funds. That may be true in some cases, but the responsibility for the recurring costs of running and staffing the facilities is usually not supported by private funds. It becomes the obligation of the athletics department, often with an ongoing subsidy from the university.

The University of Miami recently announced it would build a new football operations center for Hurricane football players at an estimated cost of $100 million. The 172,000-square-foot, seven-story structure will offer the kinds of amenities every college athlete apparently needs these days to be successful including a nutrition center, an indoor-outdoor dining hall, hydrotherapy, a recovery spa with saltwater float tanks and red light therapy, a meditation room, a primary recruiting lounge and recruiting reception area, a 7,500-square-foot rooftop terrace, and a Name, Image & Likeness (NIL) suite. Finally, it will include a golf simulation space, the sine qua non of college football preparations.

The University of Nebraska is putting the finishing touches on its $165 million football performance center. It features a locker room that’s three times the size of the current space. Whether that will help a team that went 4-8 in 2022 and fired its coach after three games remains to be seen, but the new 32,000 square foot weight room might be just what the Huskers needed.

Here is what else the University of Nebraska needs, according to its chancellor Ronnie Green: $13 million to make up for a university budget shortfall caused by two years of declining student enrollment.

Florida State University broke ground last December on its new Dunlap Football Center, at an estimated cost of $100 million. It had to keep up with the University of Florida, which in 2022 had completed its $85 million Heavener Football Training Center, complete with lounge, barber shop, virtual reality room, gaming and golf center, resort-style pool, basketball courts and multipurpose lawn and volleyball areas.

Excessive spending on intercollegiate athletics is as contagious as ever. And while we can expect the usual defenses of these expenditures – that it’s all private money, that athletics helps elevate the university overall, that winning teams boost applications and enrollment – the fact remains that this level of spending reflects institutional priorities that university leaders should be very hesitant to embrace.