Football only weight room
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I didn’t say necessary. I said more useful. Most every school is well past what is necessary
Or powering through the sand pit
When you walk in our weight room, you say "wow" kids dont care if it's shared. It's too big to matter if one of the small population non revenue sports are in there. Money would more useful other places
Pretty much every other weight room kids walk onto is football -only, and schools emphasize that. Because of that, kids care, and Tom Allen cares a ton.
You don’t agree that most other P5 schools have football only weight rooms (they do) or that Tom Allen believes this is a big deal for us (he does)? Or is that our decision to do less doesn’t matter to prospective recruits?
Dont agree that the weight room is a deciding factor in a recruit deciding to come to IU or not. Have you been in our weight room?
Mr. Wilkinson believes that such a weight room is an important factor in the overall success of a collegiate football program. I'm sure his research was thorough before throwing money at this project.
I don’t think anyone claimed it was the deciding factor, only that it was an important component of our overall facilities commitment to football. That’s why recruits value it and why coaches like Allen see so much value in it. Been in ours many times. It’s very nice, but it’s also a shared facility, and most of our competitors have a different setup.
It is helpful in the sense that it is keeping up with the Joneses. The same reason as paying coaches in the multi-millions per year is needed to keep up with the Joneses.
I'm sure it helps with recruiting as who doesn't love being pampered and having the best stuff. I just think it is all over the top. Maybe schools could work on lowering tuition for everyone with all that money they seem to have to throw at athletics....i know, i know. priorities right.
You either pay to play or you risk losing. Now that NIL and the lucrative media deals are out then you best get with it. It’s a recruiting equalizer. IU is still way behind in football facilities. IU needs to get with it. They need a separate facility altogether. For reference:
Hell even Montana will have better….
Montana's indoor practice facility expected next fall; beer garden returns this year
The UM athletic department is delaying the construction of the indoor practice facility, Montana athletic director Kent Haslam said Monday.
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We are probably the only ones that get to lift with the volleyball team and gymnast
Really, we have a gymnastic team or one gymnast?
It still stuns me that people don’t see the need for things like this, at a bare minimum.Having been on our facility many times, it’s certainly nice and spacious, but we’re far from leading the pack with regard to our facilities, as some have claimed. We need to be in a mode of continuous improvement or we‘ll never progress upward.You either pay to play or you risk losing. Now that NIL and the lucrative media deals are out then you best get with it. It’s a recruiting equalizer. IU is still way behind in football facilities. IU needs to get with it. They need a separate facility altogether. For reference:
Hell even Montana will have better….
Montana's indoor practice facility expected next fall; beer garden returns this year
The UM athletic department is delaying the construction of the indoor practice facility, Montana athletic director Kent Haslam said Monday.www.google.com
Need to total rehab or replacement for Mellencamp.You either pay to play or you risk losing. Now that NIL and the lucrative media deals are out then you best get with it. It’s a recruiting equalizer. IU is still way behind in football facilities. IU needs to get with it. They need a separate facility altogether. For reference:
Hell even Montana will have better….
Montana's indoor practice facility expected next fall; beer garden returns this year
The UM athletic department is delaying the construction of the indoor practice facility, Montana athletic director Kent Haslam said Monday.
Well we use to 55 years ago LOL but all bantering aside having been in ours and many others throughout the country, I truly believe our weightroom does not have a negative effect on recruiting
Lots of people i trust seem to think it does. Maybe mostly the way it is sold negatively by other coaches?
Today, in today’s circumstance, our NIL ability matters more than our weight-lifting facility.
Our weight room is far closer to competitive than our NIL.
Some kid picking between us and and a school that can pay him $20,000 NIL is not coming to IU because at IU the football team has an exclusive weight facility.
Truth is that having both is the only way we move from middle toward elite. But we can’t do both. And we are adding 2 schools that can, and Oregon can if they come.
We are falling behind because of money, not weightlifting.
Our weight room is far closer to competitive than our NIL.
Some kid picking between us and and a school that can pay him $20,000 NIL is not coming to IU because at IU the football team has an exclusive weight facility.
Truth is that having both is the only way we move from middle toward elite. But we can’t do both. And we are adding 2 schools that can, and Oregon can if they come.
We are falling behind because of money, not weightlifting.
Why can’t we do both? Why can’t we have a robust NIL program for football and have top third P5 facilities? The mindset of saying we can’t is the first reason why we never will do it. In truth, it’s much more a matter of we simply don’t want to, and that’s because we don’t care enough to change from the way we’ve always thought about it and done it.
Literally every other power 5, some group of 5(see Montana)athletic department/coaches recruiters and recruits disagree. Kind of strange some of you argue against that.
With these athletic departments flush with money we should dramatically improve the football facilities. If you do it will pull its own weight pretty easily.
Right and this most recent move was a relatively low-cost solution to a recurring recruiting problem. The funding for a new "Mellencamp" is another animal. Doable, but still a big ticket item.
They need to make a new complex for football only. Have everything together. Not spread out on opposite ends.
Because the fanbase does not, has not, will not put up the money.
Cannot, has not, will not sell out a 52,000 seat stadium. much less compete with Big Boy Football.
It’s a Goldilocks fan base that doesn’t come if the traffic is too bad, or it’s too hot or too cold.
Half-measures won’t close the gap between IU and the Big 2, or Penn State, or USC.
Fans say “win and we will come.” Apply that philosophy to the players and see what you get.
Sure, I appreciate that an alum has stepped up and given money. Kudos. But the wind is blowing hard into our face these days, and this won’t get us one single elite player. Not. One. We will never hear a single kid say “I was going to go to Georgia, until I heard IU had a football-team only weight room. THAT changed my mind.”
NIL will flip kids. This won’t.
Good thing Iowa never thought that way. Or Wisconsin. Or UK. Or even Cincinnati. They decided they wanted to win. They hired the right leaders and they were bold in everything they did. New facilities, even when they didn’t “have” to develop them. And it worked. We devise reasons why we can’t and create excuses around things like football only weight rooms, then wonder why players won’t come, wins won’t come, and fans won’t come, and NIL money won’t come. Put another way, if we can’t even
Respectfully disagree that our weight room doesn't negatively impact recruiting. While I agree that if a kid is seriously considering IU vs another school, the weight room will not be the deciding factor, the message it sends is definitely a turn off to recruits. No prospective recruit is going to say "In deciding between *fill in the blank* and IU, both schools were great, the difference was ultimately that *fill in the blank* has a FB only weight room, while IU does not". But it's all about the message it sends about IU's commitment to football when you first get recruits in the building.
Kids start being seriously recruited as early as the summer after sophomore year. We've had plenty of elite midwest recruits visit IU early in their recruitment, yet none of them (outside of Caden Curry in 2022) have seemed to give Indiana the time of day once their recruitment really heats up post junior season. The difference in level of facilities between IU and the upper mid/top tier of the sport is enough to eliminate IU before the staff even gets a chance to try and build a relationship with upper level recruits. When a 16 year old goes on one of those week long recruiting trips and visits IU, PU, UM, MSU, ND and OSU, every school but one shows you their FB only weight room, that's not a good reflection on the one school that doesn't have a FB only weight room. The message it sends is that IU isn't as committed to FB as everyone else. On top of that, our indoor practice facility is one of the worst in P5 FB. To elite recruits, they see this and it reflects so poorly on the program that if they have a serious offer from OSU, ND or UM, IU is immediately eliminated from contention on status alone.
However, I will submit that IUFB certainly has bigger fish to fry than just upgrading their weight facility if they want to seriously improve the level of talent they're able to compete for. On field success and now NIL matter far more than facilities in this day and age. While I think this upgrade is long overdue considering the weight rooms of our conference peers, I don't think this upgrade results in any major bump in recruiting w/o improvement on the field and in NIL.
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Our weight room is a grain of sand in how schools recruit against us
You ever heard of “take away the excuses”? That’s how you deal with negative recruiting. You take away everything or most of everything they use. This is just a step. Why gripe about how an alum wants to use his money? This is truly a weird argument.
Alabama came to look at our new weight room. I don't think it's 'far from leading the pack'.
After all the scandals like the one at MSU, I'm glad we don't.
The weight room itself is nice but it’s how it’s used that’s the problem.
That was well over a decade ago. And Alabama long ago decided they were committed to winning football, and their facilities reflect that reality (and continue to do so). Our weight room is far from leading the pack, by the way.
Just think the money would be served elsewhere, such as Mellencamp which has been pointed out. Now thats a huge negatively used recruiting ploy
Why? Because you say it is?
How many weight rooms are better. And state the criteria you use.
Because I’ve actually seen others. Ask yourself why Tom Allen has the completely opposite view from your own. Is it just because he says it’s needed, and that he has no basis for it?
Having an administration that is willing to be bold (to use your word) is not enough. A President and a board has to provide for the whole school and answer to the state Legislature.
The fan base decides whether a school has the money to compete at the highest level of athletics. IU has never had it, for many reasons.
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