Florida Gators New Standalone Facility Reaches Milestone, As Dan Mullen Expands Its Use
Scott Stricklin had a spacial issue on his hands, in that, he had none. The Florida Gators needed a new stand alone football facility. It had become glaringly obvious over the years and in the college football arms race, the Gators were not only lacking in wow factor, they were lacking in what had become basic necessities at other schools. It was time to get the football team and coaches offices out of the stadium basement. So Stricklin, the Gators Athletic Director, knew he had to deliver a facility.
But there simply wasn’t enough space.
On a campus that encompasses over 2,000 plus acres, buildings and dorms rooms and sprawling oaks take up nearly every available square inch. The University Athletic Association had finally buckled down and decided to put the facility opposite the football practice field, in an area that includes the basketball practice facility, as well as the track and field complex and tennis complex. Doing so though meant shoehorning an area that had to be show stopping, into a small fit. There would be no way to truly give the facility everything it needed within that spot. Yet there were also no other options.
At least that’s what they thought at first.
As Stricklin sat in his office, overseeing the entire department, Executive Associate Athletics Director for Internal Affairs Chip Howard entered.
“You know if we move the baseball stadium to the edge of campus,” he began, “we could expand that park and give the football facility all the space it needed.”
It was so simple—well as simple as taking on two massive relocation and construction projects can be—and it solved everyone’s problem. The baseball team received a much needed upgrade, into a $65 million new ballpark that sits like a crown jewel on the edge of campus. And the football team would get a new standalone facility that would finally get them out of the basement at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium and into the 21st century.
Thus began a project that has come a long way from a dream, produced a new baseball park, stumbled and emerged from a global pandemic, and is on track now to be completed by spring of 2022. And on Tuesday of this week, what will be known as the James W. "Bill" Heavener Football Training Center as part of a lead gift from Bill Heavener, got one massive step closer to completion, in what construction crews like to call “the topping off ceremony.”
The final structural piece was welded in, putting the bones in place for the 142,000 square foot area (the nearly 40,000 square feet of outdoor space will come later). It’s enough space for a state-of-the-art football facility. But the construction of this space revealed one more problem.
Dan Mullen didn’t want a standalone state-of-the-art football facility.
Mullen, who on Tuesday had a front row view, sporting a hard hat and watching underneath the crane, arrived in 2018 as the new football head coach. It was during this time Stricklin and Howard were putting together plans for the football facility.
Mullen and Stricklin had gone through the construction of a new facility while at Mississippi State together, so the duo knew how to navigate the stressful time to a successful conclusion. But Mullen wanted this one to be different. He wanted it to be better. And to do so, it couldn’t benefit just the football team.
So this new facility will primarily be an All-Sports complex.
There will be an area on the back half that connects to the indoor practice facility. It’ll host the weight room, training and recovery room, coaches offices and locker room. That will be for football only use.
But while other schools put in waterfalls and slides and high tech entertainment center, then say “this is just for the football team,” Mullen pushed for the “wow” factor of this facility to be multi-purpose.
“I think some [school’s facilities] are like ‘hey we’re football only,’” Mullen explained to reporters on Tuesday.
“I think what makes Florida so special is that bond of the student athletes. I mean—a massive contributor to the 2006 national championship football team was the 2006 men's basketball team. The motivation I think that that drove the players and the interaction that they had, I think that motivates.
"That was always my vision of, if we're going to create this massive amenity area that has all these great things, I want all of our student athletes to be able to utilize that. And I also want our players around these other successful people and have them interact…so that our players can be around Olympians and world record holders and national champions and they can all interact and grow and learn from each other. Then our locker room for the football players, alone, the locker room will probably be one of the biggest wow factors. It’s going to be the premier locker room in probably all of sports at any level.”
The wow factors will still be abundant and, well, wowing. There will be a barber shop, a recording studio, a virtual gaming center, indoor pool, outdoor pool, golf simulators, an outdoor lawn center for volleyball/wiffleball/kickball tournaments, and more.
Each entrance will boast a nutrition center, so that no player has to decided between getting in their car 200 feet away or walking to the other side of the massive facility. The healthy options will always be within reach.
The weight room opens directly onto the indoor practice facility, helping to make those days with Strength and Conditioning Coach Nick Savage seamless. Walkways will be covered from the locker room for the days it’s storming, coaches offices will look out over the fields, and there will be a recovery center within a few feet of any area a player could potentially be injured.
There’s even an area that’s nothing. It’s probably Dan Mullen’s favorite part.
“We all met and I said, ‘Can you tell me what college football is going to be like in 10 years? What’s the cutting thing we need in this facility 10 years from now?’ We’re all thinking, I said, ‘I’m not sure.’ So we actually redesigned part of the building that has an area right now for future development; that it can immediately, it's going to be—I mean it's it's finished, it’s that, it’s going to become a bigger area that is set for future development.”
These are the things Dan Mullen has been involved in the past couple of years. After visiting other schools, and even corporate headquarters—“Why do people want to work at Apple and Google,” Mullen asked—the staff and administration compiled their research to see what worked in other places, what didn’t, and what would need to be tweaked to appeal to future Florida athletes. Then there was also the matter of focusing on the athletes themselves. While designers and architects wanted to focus on natural light and sleek lines, he had to think about a football team and athletes.
“When you’re in architectural design you’re not thinking about 6-foot-5, 350-pound guys as being the normal person walking around,” joked Mullen.
“I have 100 guys in a meeting room that aren’t normal human beings. Our guys are probably not normal human beings, so when you design a hallway or you design a door or you put a chair in …I [ask] ‘Is max capacity like 450 pounds?’ And they’re like, ‘Excuse me?’ We have big guys here. Our guys are a little bit thicker a little bit wider than most people.
“They brought in chairs for the meeting room, so I brought Stew [Stewart Reese], Ethan [White] and Des [Desmond Watson]* up to sit in the chairs and show that this is the chair that we need.
“So I’m like, Ok, we have 100 guys, these enormous guys, how’s the fastest way for me to get them fro the team meeting room to on the field? And they’re like, ‘But it looks so much prettier this way.’ Nah, I need functionality. They’re like ‘What if we have one door in the middle and it opens like this?’ Absolutely not. Give me a door on this side and a door on that side so half can go that way and half can go the other way to get us out of the room. That’s my expertise in architecture.”
*Average weight of 377 pounds between the three
This is a long term plan for long term success. Being the man at the forefront requires a long term commitment. The Florida Gators and Dan Mullen made that to each other this offseason, with Mullen’s contract being extended three more years, now through the 2026 season (until January 2027).
After an offseason that included NFL coaching rumors, critics for how the season ended and speculation that Mullen had his eye on the next level, this contract extension—working hand-in-hand with the new facility and the recruits it will inevitably attract—is Mullen and the Gators way of saying he’s here to stay.
“Scott and I have a great relationship and I love everybody questioning everything and where is our relationship at? I want to tell you, that hasn’t wavered. That never wavered. It was nothing we wanted to dive into to try and play things out in the media as we were working on the contract extension that had been in work for a long time.
“I think people kind of blew this up a lot more than it was and it wasn’t worth arguing. I think now and the result that everybody sees where the relationship is, how we work together, and both of our long term commitments to being here at Florida and making this program where it needs to be.”
Thanks! This is by far the best written, most expansive article anyone has penned about the relationship between the new Heavener Center, Mullen, Strickland and the vision for the future. Just excellent.