So, so incredibly much of what happens in college football boils down to, "We know it's unnecessary, but if we don't do it, our competitors will." Nowhere else has this logic borne out more -- and more expensively -- than in the facilities arms race.
Despite the fact that a Journal of Marketing in Higher Educationstudy found that facilities have little to no impact on winning recruits -- While a large number of athletic programs have been building or completing facilities projects, our study found little to no impact from new athletic facilities on the recruitment of potential football or men’s basketball recruits." -- schools keep building them. (The counterargument to this, best I can tell, would be that a brand-new facility may not put you ahead of the Joneses, the Smiths and the Johnsons of your neighborhood in the chase for Billy Five-Star, being 30 years behind the Joneses, Smiths and Johnsons in the facilities game would send Billy elsewhere.)
The latest school to test this hypothesis is Missouri, where they just opened a brand-new $100 million south end zone facility at Faurot Field. Check below to see what $100 million gets you these days.
While his players were still sniffing that new-facility smell, Mizzou offensive coordinator Derek Dooley dropped a stink bomb of harsh smelling reality. "We ain't winning one f---ing game because of this facility," he said. "Y'all understand that? The secret's out in the dirt." Dooley then launched into a story of his days as the Dallas Cowboys' wide receivers coach, when the team took a field trip to the Navy SEAL headquarters in Coronado, Calif. "I can't wait to see it. This must be the best facility in America. I walk in, and the first place we go is the meeting room where they met, they'd watch film and they'd organize. Concrete floor, metal chairs. Concrete floor, metal chairs. Holy shit," he said. "Then I go to where they do their morning exercises. Concrete, nothing else. Just a big concrete slab... Then we go to where they really train. It's right on the beach. The water's cold, they've got sand, and they've got these rubber boats, a couple of logs and they've got this little obstacle ropes course. That's it. The head guy says, 'All I need is some cold water, some sand and a rubber boat, and I'll tell you who the baddest (dudes) in the world are.' "I'm like, 'Shit, that's pretty good.'"