Last Thursday afternoon, UVa’s administration put together a couple key accomplishments to celebrate, starting with the topping-off ceremony for the newly-named Harrison Family Olympic Sports Center. Then the assembled crowd prepared for the unveiling of the new Football Operations Center, which has been years in the making and desperately needed to modernize the program.
And while all the remarks leading up to the ribbon cutting were part of that celebration, it was obvious that the VAF donors and UVa staff members on site were itching to get into the building and see it for themselves.
Those in attendance were surely not disappointed. Virginia’s new football-only facility is not only a massive upgrade in size and functionality, it feels like the state-of-the-art building that a program at UVa’s level needs in order to compete on the field and with recruits.
The football ops center, yet to be named after any donor or other dignitary at this point, checks in at 90,000-square feet and with an $80-million price tag. So much work was poured in by administrators, coaches, donors, and construction partners alike to reach the impressive final product rolled out to the public last week. But hours before donors or media were allowed to see the building, the big reveal came on Thursday morning, when the football players and coaches got to check out their new home. Head coach Tony Elliott said their reaction was the most gratifying part of a significant day for the program.
“For me personally it’s about the reaction we got this morning,” Elliott said at last week’s grand opening. “At 8:30 this morning we opened the doors to the locker room and let the players go in for the first time. Seeing the joy, the excitement, you’re seeing that on the faces of the current players, but you know that’s a representation of all the guys who have come through here.”
UVa made several players available to the media at Thursday’s ceremony, each more excited than the last about their new building. For players like defensive lineman Ben Smiley, who was sold on playing at Virginia while the program was housed in the aging McCue Center, Thursday’s grand opening was a sign of increased investment in the program from the university and its donors.
“It makes me happy but also makes me kind of want to cry a little bit because I only get one year with the place,” Smiley told us last week. “But I’m going to love it the whole year, me and my teammates are going to love it. We’re sure appreciative of the donors and the community and everyone for the support.”
The first stop on the tour was the weight room, which provided a show-stopping entrance to the facility. Filled with natural light from the glass exterior, the weight room is a 14,000-square foot meathead’s paradise, consisting of more than 150,000 pounds of weights and custom equipment from wall to wall. Though the Hoos typically train in two groups of 60 players, this room provides the opportunity for the entire team to train together simultaneously, something not possible at McCue.
College football players spend a great deal of time with their strength staff and nobody seemed more giddy about the new building on Thursday than strength coach Adam Smotherman, who led his first workout in the building on Monday. Smotherman, who has experience in top-notch facilities from his time at Clemson, said UVa’s building can compete with any in the country and clearly had a big hand in the weight-room’s planning.
“Fortunately Coach Elliott gave me a lot of opportunity to design this how our guys needed it to be designed so that we can train our guys the way they need to be trained,” Smotherman said. “I’m excited that I got to have a big hand in this.”
Smotherman went into great detail explaining the new technology at the team’s disposal, including the customer weight racks, connected to power through the floor and attached to a velocity training system called Perch that can be monitored without having to run for batteries or recharge anything. Smotherman’s new home, including his own office, a change, is connected to UVa’s nutrition area, a focus for Elliott since his arrival on Grounds. The room itself has a specific flow that allows training to be logical and seamless, and should be high energy given its approximately 62 speakers and subwoofers.
“Needless to say, it will be bumping,” Coach Smotherman told us.
From there, our tour took us from one corner of the building to another, with thoughtful design elements mixed into state-of-the-art equipment and technology. The media cohort on site got a special tour from Cavalier defender Joe Holland, who interned at the building’s construction firm, Barton Malow, and even poured concrete in the building during it’s construction. Holland led the group through the beautiful and bright lobby that will surely make a great first impression, into the gear display area, which served as both a modern recruiting tool, but also a tasteful tribute to fallen Cavaliers Lavel Davis, D’Sean Perry and Devin Chandler, whose uniforms are modeled on a podium that includes their names and photos at the bottom.
“It had to be done,” Elliott said of the tribute. “I’m so grateful that we were able to capture it the way we were able to capture it. At least for my time at the University of Virginia, that’s going to be a huge part of our legacy. And I’m hoping that we’re able to establish it so that it’s forever.”
From there, it was off to the spacious sports medicine area that includes plunge pools, hot and cold tubs, and even a treadmill pool. That area should be a great resource to the players and their trainers, and is conveniently located right next to the players’ locker room which is everything the players need it to be, and is surely a much nicer place to hang out than its predecessor at McCue.
Even though the players have plenty of other spaces to gather in the building, including their own player’s lounge with games and TVs connected to their new dining space, a new feature that keeps the players from needing to cross the street to JPJ to eat after practice.
One floor up, the building is much more businesslike. Just above the locker room is a team meeting room that overlooks the practice fields, and features 195 custom chairs and a custom 8K projector screen. From there, it’s down the hall to position meeting rooms that feature tributes to the best Cavaliers at those positons on the wall, and modern spaces for the players to meet with their coaches. Those rooms are also equipped with their own nutrition stations. The walk down the hall culminates with the coaches’ offices and staff meeting rooms and work areas for the rest of the support staff.
Each stop on the tour was fascinating and impressive, but simply walking from one to the other was worthwhile, too. It’s clear that a lot of time was spent on little details, like the white board shaped like the state of Virginia to be signed by football alums, or the map with markers showing the hometown of each player on the roster, or the current and former UVa alums in the NFL display. In the building’s long second-floor hallway, the wall on one end of the building has the CavMan logo, leading to the team meeting room and position meeting room area, above the locker room. On the other end of the corridor is the Rotunda, which can be seen from the other end of the building. The idea, Elliott’s, was that the Rotunda end would signify the student-athlete’s journey towards graduation, while the CavMan logo, in the football-specific area, would be about the preparation for competition on the field, and that the message is that the student-athletes at Virginia should be focused on both.
“I wanted to capture the essence of walking the Lawn,” Elliott said about the Rotunda wall. “Again, trying to be intentional with capturing the University of Virginia, Virginia Football and the current state of the program and what our core values are.
“As you go through the building you see what Virginia football is,” Virginia’s head whistle continued. “I wanted the building to be timeless, I wanted it to capture all different eras. To be contemporary enough to show the glitz and glamor for certain recruits, but also pay homage to all the guys who didn’t have an opportunity to walk through those doors today but laid the foundation for Virginia football. I think the staff that worked on it, from the administration to the internal folks, did a really good job of capturing the messaging for the building.”
Thursday’s grand opening was the culmination of years of work by the university and donors, and perhaps chief among them, athletic director Carla Williams, who can tout this impressive new building as one of her chief development accomplishments during her tenure in Charlottesville. At least the previous three coaches before Elliott were talking about the need for an upgraded facility, and kudos goes to the administration for delivering, while also raising funds for the olympic facility and other key projects, while rebounding from a budget-straining pandemic.
Everyone at the grand opening saw first-hand UVa’s investment in football, which was certainly years later than it was needed, but a major positive step nonetheless.
In the last 15 years, UVa’s program has made up the ground necessary in facilities, starting with the indoor facility opened in the Mike London era, followed by the grass practice fields completed during the Bronco Mendenhall regime. The football operations center is full of bells and whistles, and should be a place that UVa’s football players want to spend more time in, rather than a place they can’t wait to get out of.
But the key takeaway is that through the university’s investment in technology, space, and many thoughtful design elements, the program should have what it needs to compete. Now, what the players and coaches are able to do with their better resources is what will determine success, and return on investment for this major upgrade.
At least for a decade or so, UVa’s coaches and administrators can no longer say they’re miles behind in facilities, or don’t have what they need to compete for top talent in recruiting, or don’t have the resources to give their team an edge on Saturdays. And for Elliott, the new building means he doesn’t have to sell what “could be” to recruits or try to sell them on how committed UVa is to building a winner in football: Now, he can simply open the retina-scan activated door and show them.
“Now they can touch it and feel it. And it’s not something where you’re saying ‘it’s going to be here, it’s going to be here,’” Elliott said of the building’s impact in recruiting. “Now, there’s no excuse. It’s here, so now you can see the true investment that the institution is making in our scholar athletes.”
