The Tennessee Volunteers have a brand-new, $45 million, 145,000 square foot football practice facility. Since that is precisely as ridiculous as it sounds, the Volunteers decided to outfit it with all manner of things that there is no realistic reason for. If you're wondering what all that square footage is being used for, a local reporter provided the full scoop.
Tennessee Volunteers Training Facility Installs MMA Cage, For Some Reason
Bill Hanstock is a writer, author and Emmy Award-winning producer. He began writing for SB Nation in 2011.
Andrew Gribble of GoVolsXtra was recently given a tour of the new facility by head coach Derek Dooley.
Players will be able to walk straight from the 120-yard practice field into the new weight room — a 22,000 square foot “multilevel thunderdome of power,” as it’s called in UT’s promotional video for the facility. Along with the standard free weights, machines, cardiovascular training equipment — which will be situated on a deck that overlooks the weight room — and a nutrition bar, it will feature a mixed martial arts cage “so we can go in and fight and all that stuff,” Dooley said.
“Go in and fight and all that stuff.” Straight from the mouth of the football head coach who runs a “thunderdome of power.” There’s certainly no way that this will possibly backfire. I can’t imagine that a large group of college-aged football players, given free reign over a massive complex and an MMA cage, would ever do anything foolish and, oh, I don’t know, wind up injured in a freak jackassery accident.
And of course, there is this morsel of information:
The weight room leads straight into the 7,000 square foot locker room, which will feature 125 lockers equipped to charge iPods and cellphones. The area is spacious compared to UT’s current changing area and more secluded from other male and female student-athletes.
“When you have 120 guys in a room and half the time they’re not dressed, you need a little room so you’re not bumping into each other,” Dooley said.
Let that be a lesson to all potential recruits: if you go to Tennessee, you will never accidentally touch anyone, ever. Methinks there’s a school that just became the number one destination in the SEC.
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