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University of Oregon Opens Incredible New Football Training Facility

$68 million and 145,000 square feet. Those are the particulars of the Oregon Ducks’ brand-spanking-new football training facility, a building that looks more like a futuristic space station than a place where football players gather for meetings and workouts. The facility boasts state-of-the-art training equipment, flatscreen TVs, and even a barbershop—in case of a hair emergency. Click through the slideshow to get a virtual tour of the facility, and dream of the day when you commit to play football for Oregon.

If you can’t get enough of Oregon’s cutting edge facilities, let former Ducks running back LaMichael James take you on a tour of the football stadium and alternate training facility.

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Oregon Embraces ‘University of Nike’ Image

By Greg Bishop

• Aug. 2, 2013

EUGENE, Ore. — The Football Performance Center at the University of Oregon features rugs woven by hand in Nepal, couches made in Italy and Brazilian hardwood underfoot in the weight room that is so dense, designers of this opulent palace believe it will not burn.

This is Oregon football . There is a barbershop with utensils from Milan. And a duck pond. And a locker room that can be accessed by biometric thumbprints. And chairs upholstered with the same material found in a Ferrari’s interior. And walls covered in football leather.

Nike football leather, naturally.

The Football Performance Center, which was unveiled publicly this week, is as much country club as football facility, potentially mistaken for a day spa, or an art gallery, or a sports history museum, or a spaceship — and is luxurious enough to make N.F.L. teams jealous. It is, more than anything, a testament to college football’s arms race, to the billions of dollars at stake and to the lengths that universities will go to field elite football programs.

The performance center was paid for through a donation from Phil Knight, a founder of Nike, an Oregon alumnus and a longtime benefactor of the university. During a tour of the complex Wednesday, university officials declined to give a dollar figure, even a ballpark one, insisting they did not know the total cost of a football center where even the garbage cans were picked with great care to match the overall design. (Early design estimates placed the center’s cost at $68 million, which, based on the tour, seemed conservative.)

The tour lasted more than three hours and covered the full 145,000 square feet of the complex (with 60,000 additional square feet of parking). Nike and its relationship with Oregon are obvious early and throughout. One small logo outside the Ducks’ locker room featured the university’s mascot, wearing a top hat adorned with a dollar sign. Oregon football is often viewed through that lens by outsiders, who derisively have christened Oregon as Nike University.

“We are the University of Nike,” said Jeff Hawkins, the senior associate athletic director of football administration and operations. “We embrace it. We tell that to our recruits.”

The center is also an answer to how the Ducks turned a mediocre program into an unlikely powerhouse in a city of just more than 150,000 people. Where other schools, the Alabamas and Notre Dames, sold tradition, Oregon peddled the future. It rolled out a series of uniforms, neon and blinding white and every shade of green, designed to attract both athletes and attention. It ran a spread offense, which it famously practiced without breaks, and has advanced to four straight Bowl Championship Series contests, including the national championship game after the 2010 season.

Now it has the best football operations center Nike can buy, designed by ZGF Architects, Firm 151 and Hoffman Construction. The center is divided into three buildings, all black and shiny rectangular blocks, connected by a sky bridge. Those buildings — and everything around them — are black and boxy by design. Made of black granite, corrugated metal and fritted glass, the elements are arranged like pieces of a Jenga game to show cohesion between units (they also look like the shell of an impenetrable force). A local newspaper quoted an architect who described it as a “Darth Vaderish Death Star.” The designers took that as a compliment.

“The space, flow and efficiency are not excessive,” Hawkins said. “From what we had to what we have now, it fits what we need to teach.”

For Oregon football, black is the new black, down to the black toilets in the locker room that were described, perhaps in jest, as stealth. The athletes wanted it to look cool, and architects balanced their needs — down to the custom green PlayStation consoles and pool tables made by the same Portland company that designed two for Michael Jackson — with those of the coaches, who are older and spend most of their waking hours in the center and wanted, more than anything, a diverse selection of after-shave.

Throughout the tour, Eugene Sandoval, design partner at ZGF Architects, and Randy Stegmeier, principal interior designer at Firm 151, returned often to their favorite buzzwords, which they said guided the design: sleek, bombastic, cutting-edge. They said things like, “the material palate is elevated to a very sophisticated level” and “you will see sequencing of form and function of space.”

In simpler terms, Sandoval explained that “this sports facility has a soul.”

“It’s about not being afraid to make history,” he continued.

The soul of Oregon’s football operations center, then, is an all-black room on a top floor known as both the War Room and Area 51.

There are 22 seats at the table, and they are assigned, with the head coach at head and others placed next to him based on order of importance. The table is German and walnut and 35 feet long. The rug is shaped in an “O” and made in Nepal and weighs 500 pounds. The walls are magnetic and can be written on, part of Oregon football’s goal to eventually operate without paper. (No word on if the seats eject. Or if Coach Mark Helfrich is in possession of nuclear launch codes.)

Oregon’s search for improved facilities started eight years ago. The first trip featured 11 people in a private jet, architects and designers and contractors and school officials, and they visited nine universities in three days. They studied counterparts in the Big Ten, Big 12 and Southeastern conferences. At one point, Sandoval traveled 37 hours to China to find a specific rock quarry, which ultimately produced the stones in the ground floor plaza.

Enough to Make an N.F.L. Team Jealous

View Slide Show ›

The small details stand out. The bathrooms with green stalls and mirrors with painted Ducks slugging conference foes. The extra-large furniture tested to withstand 500 pounds. The elevators decorated with famous plays in Oregon football history, the actual plays, drawn up in Xs and Os by a coach. The room for professional scouts to watch footage of Oregon players. The ticker running sports scores.

On and on, for football’s sake:

The foosball tables from Barcelona in the players’ lounge. The ventilation systems in each locker. The magic shelves that charge phones or tablet devices without the need to plug in. The 250-plus televisions.

The Ring Room, shaped like an O, with rings underneath green neon light and audio created by Finnish engineers using game-day sound from Autzen Stadium. The cafeteria, this being the Pacific Northwest, with the espresso machine and the farm-to-table philosophy and the sign that reads, “Eat Your Enemies — And Other Food Groups.” The terrazzo floors made with recycled glass. The 40-yard electronic track inside the weight room that measures the force of each step and the efficiency of each run.

The coaches have their own locker room, complete with a hydrotherapy pool and steam shower, made from blue stone slate, and, of course, dozens of kinds of after-shave in front of the bathroom mirrors, which feature built-in televisions.

Gary Campbell, one of the longest-tenured assistants in college sports at the same university, with three decades spent at Oregon, once worked with three other coaches in an office the same size as his current one, in the basement of the basketball court. When he inched backward, he bumped into his office mates. “There is no comparison,” he said Wednesday, in front of his couch and his two computer monitors and his three televisions, the office paneled in walnut, the smell somewhere between new car and Pottery Barn showroom.

Welcome to college football, circa 2013, where the best programs build Ritz-Carltons as much as Olympic training facilities and call them football centers, where a university like Oregon, which raised its profile and millions of dollars in revenue through football, must defend its space-age approach.

“People will complain, but this is not excessive,” said Rob Mullens, the university’s athletic director. “This is probably the most complete space in college sports.”

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Oregon Ducks unveil plans for new indoor practice facility

• Updated: Oct. 22, 2021, 10:54 a.m. |
• Published: Oct. 19, 2021, 7:46 p.m.

• James Crepea | The Oregonian/OregonLive

EUGENE — The Oregon Ducks will have a new indoor practice facility.

UO unveiled plans for a new 170,000-square-foot facility between Leo Harris Parkway and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, where the current outdoor football practice fields are.

Current plans call for a 130,000-square-foot practice field and 40,000-square-foot connector between the field and the Hatfield Dowlin Complex to be built by 2024. The connector will include an “expanded weight room and players’ lounge” and outdoor terrace for team use and events.

The new facility will create “additional access to the Moshofsky Center” for Oregon’s other sports teams, which share the 23-year-old facility with the football team. Opened in 1998, the Moshofsky Center was the first indoor practice facility in the then-Pac-10.

“The core of our mission here at Oregon is to provide an exceptional student-athlete experience and the best possible opportunity to maximize their potential,” Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens said in a statement. “This new facility enhances support for UO student-athletes by combining innovation and functionality in the best possible way while also increasing access to indoor training opportunities for all of our Duck student-athletes.”

The cost of the new indoor practice facility is not specified and will be funded “entirely with private philanthropy and will be managed through the UO Foundation,” per a release.

The exterior shell will be made from Northwest timber in the form of the Oregon “O” with the the center of the roof made of tinted polymer panels supported by a steel cable system, “which allows natural light to reach the field without glare while insulating against heat,” per a release. A ventilation system will be available for use to mitigate air quality issues from wildfires, though the new facility will largely rely on natural ventilation and daylight and be powered with renewable energy generated on site.

“Our world-class labs, classrooms, residence halls and athletic facilities fuel an undeniable passion and inspire excellence in students, faculty, staff and alumni,” UO president Michael Schill said in a release. “This new facility will ensure that our student-athletes can continue to push themselves without limits and compete on a global scale.”

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Stunning amenities in Oregon's new football facility

EUGENE, Ore. -- Eight years ago, a group of architects, interior designers, college football coaches and associates of Nike co-founder Phil Knight began a journey that started with visits to nine college football facilities and eventually took them to four continents. Their journey has ended this summer, at the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex, a black steel and glass, six-story tribute to innovation and competition.

At each college stop, project manager Howard Slusher's final question to the group's host was, "What would you do to make it better?"

Funded primarily by Knight and his wife Penny and named after their respective mothers Lota and Dorothie, the building contains 145,000 square feet of meeting space, instructional rooms, fitness centers, locker rooms, offices, dining facilities, lounges, auditoriums, offices and other spaces unlike any seen in a sports facility. Some of the spaces were built more than once.

"When the person who builds it just wants the best, what are you supposed to tell them?" smiled Jeff Hawkins, Oregon's Senior Associate Athletic Director for Football Administration, who was involved in the project throughout its progression.

USA TODAY Sports received an all-access tour of the complex on Wednesday. Here's what we saw:

The 25,000-square foot weight room is fortified with Brazilian Ipe wood floors, which have a reputation for being dense enough to bend a nail. Above the free weight and plyometric area is one of the world's only 40-yard electronic tracks.

Oregon's coaches asked for two broad concepts to drive the design of their spaces in the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex: comfort, and the ability to work long hours. "And Coach (John) Neal wanted aftershave in the bathrooms," joked architect Eugene Sandoval of Portland firm ZGF. Actually, Sandoval wasn't exaggerating. Interior designer Randy Stegmeier consulted with the coaches to curate the selection of men's care products placed in the coaches' locker room. And with televisions embedded in the mirror, they can catch a glimpse of the nightly news while they spray on their Burberry.

Like the players' locker room on the same level, the third-floor coaches' features individually ventilated lockers to eliminate odors, infection-free Corian surfaces, secure keypad-powered locker opening and closing, and a "magic shelf" to recharge portable electronics without plugging them in. Unlike the players', it has a feel and look described as more "stately" and "country club-like", and a four-foot deep hydrotherapy pool to ease aches and pains. Oregon's coaching staff of former football players has more than 300 years' combined experience.

For years, Oregon players have sat on a box outside the old Ducks football locker room and had their hair cut by teammates who showed aptitude with barber clippers. The new player locker room will offer a more professional setting. "Howard's Barber Shop" features a real barber chair with the Ducks' winged O on its head rest, full length mirrors, cabinets full of barber tools (though no straight razors, which are against state codes), two lounge chairs from Milan for waiting customers, and two curated wall displays of scissors, combs and razors. Not shown: An actual barber pole, mounted on the wall.

The mandate for players' locker room was "no smell." So to combat that, each German-built locker is fitted with its own ventilation system guaranteed to desiccate the sweatiest, stinkiest shoulder pads in an hour. This was one of the rooms in the building that was designed and built twice during the construction process.

The pro scout room has six computer work stations for scouts visiting campus to watch practice. It also has a pantry. "Some schools don't want pro scouts on their campus at practice," Hawkins said. "We provide them a workspace."

The Hatfield-Dowlin Complex has many, many lounges. It even has one for the media. Like an amazingly high percentage of rooms in the building, this one on the third level has a pantry, Italian furnishings, and lots of walnut. It also is attached to the press conference room, which has "wallpaper" made of Nike football leather, and chairs upholstered with the same leather found in a Ferrari. One note about the walnut: Interior designer Randy Stegmeier of Portland's Firm151 said the rejection rate for the walnut was 96 percent, meaning that out of every 100 boards available, only an average of four were deemed to be of high enough quality for this project. The remainder was kept by the provider for other work.

A neon sign in the first floor cafeteria reads, "Eat your enemies and the other food groups". The words "farm to table" were uttered shortly after we entered this room. The facility and its offerings were modeled after corporate dining settings at Google, Oracle, Nike and Genentech. Adjacent to the cafeteria is a walnut-lined dining room large enough to house all of Oregon's athletes in two seatings.

The lobby features a cantilevered display of 64 individual TV screens, each 55 inches on the diagonal, that can be combined into one display or 64 individual displays. Below them on the left as one enters the lobby is a display case of 18 maquettes dressed in miniature versions of Oregon's uniforms dating from 1894. To the right is a small, dark space called the "Ring Room", which resembles a Tiffany display. Small glass cases of bowl and championship rings, washed in yellow or green light just out from the black walls. Upon entering the space, you are enveloped in 3D sound recorded from live games at Autzen Stadium. It is the same sound engineering, by Charlie Morrow Productions, used at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

The players' lounge has a pool table made by a Portland company whose previous clients include the late Michael Jackson. It also has two foosball tables made in Barcelona that have hand-painted kickers made to look like Oregon players and the Ducks' rivals from the Pac-12. This portion of the glass-enclosed lounge opens to a terrace.

Hawkins said if you walked into the Ducks' old facility in the period between their two-a-day practices, you'd see players sprawled out all over the floor and furniture sleeping. So in the new sixth-floor players' lounge, the sofas recline into beds. In the distance are multiple gaming stations, where players use PlayStations branded with the Ducks' wing logo.

An evolving art installation representing Ducks who have "flown" to the NFL can be found on the sixth floor. Every Oregon football player who has been drafted into the NFL (121 as of this year) is represented into this sculpture, located in a quiet foyer adjacent to a family lounge. The players' initials are engraved on the ducks, which are color coded based on the round in which the player was drafted. The wire suspension allows for more ducks to be added over time. The floor of the family lounge, by the way, is covered by a hand woven rug from Nepal. Atop that sits a collection of B&B Italia sofas lined in football leather.

When running backs coach Gary Campbell came to Oregon 30 years ago, he shared an office with three other coaches that was smaller than his new one. "I used to put my head under the desk to make recruiting calls," he said. Each of Oregon's assistant coaches now has an office built on the same blueprint, with magnetic, writeable black-backed glass walls embedded with three TVs, a seating area for small meetings, a pantry, a room-length picture rail for awards and photos, and a locally made hydraulic piston-powered desktop so that they can sit or stand at their walnut desks.

Head coach Mark Helfrich's fourth-floor office at the end of the hall has glass on three sides and is perched above the practice field. Its layout was inspired by coach Mack Brown's "living room" office at Texas. In the conference room adjacent to Helfrich's office is one of the building's coolest features: a Batman-like private staircase to his parking space in the garage four stories below.

The "War Room", in the center of a restricted section of the fourth floor called "Area 51", is accessible by less than 40 people within the program. The room, primarily used for recruiting analysis and final game preparations, is surrounded by black-backed glass that is writable and magnetic, is embedded with televisions and touchscreens, and all equipment can be hidden in barely visible cabinets. Its centerpiece is a 35-foot-long table with 22 chairs, each positioned directly under a light. This was one of the rooms that was built more than once.

Position meeting rooms on the fourth and fifth levels include custom Herman Miller chairs in the Ducks' color palette, tribute walls featuring the jersey numbers of former Oregon greats and open spaces in front of the display screens for physical demonstrations of technique.

Restrooms in the building feature wall-size, hand-laid mosaics of Ann Sacks tile designed to portray the Ducks' winning bowl game rings.

Daniel Uthman, USA TODAY Sports' senior editor for Colleges, is on Twitter @DanUthman .

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Oregon unveils its new multimillion dollar football complex.

If money can buy championships, then the pressure is on the University of Oregon Ducks, because inside its new Football Performance Center, money is no object.

The facility, formally named the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex, was funded by billionaire alum Phil Knight of Nike and his wife, Penny (the center is named for their mothers). Neither Knight nor the university would say how much the six-story behemoth cost, but some estimates peg it at $68 million.

(Read more: Sports, crime and money: Athletes gone bad )

Within the black glass walls is 145,000 square feet of Italian marble, hand hewn basalt rock, bacteria-resistant surfaces, and walnut so pristine that the school says Knight's construction team rejected 96 percent of it. From the outside, its black glass surface makes it look a bit like a rectangular Death Star ... or Duck Star.

Among the amenities:

• A players lounge with Italian leather furniture, rugs hand-woven in Nepal, custom Playstation consoles bearing duck wings, a pool table from the same company that made one for Michael Jackson, and a custom-made foosball table with Oregon players going up against Pac-12 rivals.
• A coaching staff "War Room" surrounded by black glass walls you can write on, a 32-foot-long German-made table on top of a rug that weighs 500 pounds. It's been nicknamed "Area 51."
• A space-age locker room requiring a biometric thumbprint to enter, codes to open lockers, individual ventilation systems to keep the locker room odor free, and a locker shelf that shifts downward to put the helmet and should pads within arms reach.
• The head coach's office has windows on three sides overlooking three new practice fields, and there's a special hot tub for the coaching staff, with televisions embedded in bathroom mirrors.
• An auditorium with 170 seats covered in Ferrari leather, with each seat tested to bear as much as 500 pounds.
• A 25,000-square-foot weight room with floors made of Brazilian Ipe wood, considered so hard it bends nails.

(Read more: How Twitter changed the way NBA fans watch )

The school says it leased the land next to Autzen Stadium to Knight's foundation. The foundation built (and in some cases rebuilt) the facility and has donated it back to the school as a gift. Now the state-owned university is pitching "naming opportunities" for other supporters to cover maintenance costs.

Many have nicknamed the school the University of Nike, but the athletic director embraces the moniker, calling the new center the "economic engine" for the entire athletic program (all student athletes regardless of sport are allowed to use the state of the art cafeteria).

It is over the top, but is it enough to push Oregon finally to win the BCS Championship after being an also-ran for years? The school is dealing with relatively mild NCAA penalties for recruiting violations, and it lost head coach Chip Kelly to the Philadelphia Eagles this season.

Still, Oregon is looking ahead. College recruiting is an arms race, and the Duck Star may be a nuclear weapon.

—By CNBC's Jane Wells. Follow her on Twitter @janewells .

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Incredible photos and video of Oregon's new football facility

Phil Knight's masterpiece has arrived. Follow @SBNationCFB

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Share All sharing options for: Incredible photos and video of Oregon's new football facility

Oregon's new football facility has finally been completed, and yes, it's just as crazy as you have heard . The $68 million, 145,000-square foot facility funded by Phil Knight has been described as, "Darth Vaderish Death Star," "A little elitist," and "...a little bit too much in the intimidating direction," but it's impossible to say it's not an impressive facility.

Here's a closer look at some of the features.

The building lobby

Includes 64 55" televisions that can be linked together to show one image, or all show something different. Absurd on a multitude of levels.

The team cafeteria

The locker room, the barber shop, the team meeting room, the head coach's office, the coaches' hot tub.

Yes, Oregon coaches have their own hot tub.

The weight room

The coaches' war room.

Here's the full gallery, courtesy of GoDucks.com:

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Arena football returns to Oregon with Blackbears’ franchise opener in Salem

SALEM Ore. (KPTV) - Saturday was game night in Salem for the franchise opener of the Oregon Blackbears at the state fairgrounds as the Arena Football League rides again in the Beaver State.

The Blackbears’ home opener against the Washington Wolfpack was the first in the revival of spring ball with wall-to-wall pigskin in the capital city.

“It’s very specifically named the Oregon Blackbears so that we can be a part of the entire state of Oregon,” said team co-owner Justin Butler. “How do we make sure this is the place you want to spend your Saturday evening?”

Oregon’s third go at the AFL calls the Pavilion at the Oregon State Fairgrounds home, sweet, home in Salem.

“One of the reasons we love this arena, is you’re never too far from the action, right? You have front row seats, you’re just about 13 rows is all you have here so everything on the action is very, very close,” Butler said.

Blackbears’ team president Patrick Johnson was a two-sport University of Oregon Duck star in track and football in Eugene. That ‘94 Rose Bowl with Gang Green was now three decades ago.

“To have a fresh face, even though I’m old news, you know? But to have him involved is definitely a great benefit for us,” Johnson said. “Being able to provide some football, it’s been very special to be able to pull it off.”

A Super Bowl champion with the Baltimore Ravens, Johnson knows winning and he’s packing it back to with the game that has given him a lifelong path to success.

“It’s given me more to me than I could even give back to it and that’s why this is important. This is a way for me to kind of pay things forward,” Johnson said. “You never know how you can impact somebody’s life that’s really not even affiliated with playing football on the field.”

The play inside on the AFL turf could just pave a way to the big show.

“We might have three guys this year that have an opportunity to go to an NFL training camp but that is the goal to be able to provide an opportunity for these guys that showcase their talent,” Johnson said.

The Blackbears remain home this coming Saturday - May the 4th be with you for a 6:30 p.m. kickoff.

Tickets range from $20 to $40 and are free for kids 12 and under.

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