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76 GOLD AND BLACK ILLUSTRATED the Boilermaker football footprint. "We determined that in Purdue's football situation the student-ath- letes were wasting up to 45-60 min- utes a day, through no fault of their own. So if you can cut down on travel, by having more of a compre- hensive facility all in one location, you save on precious time and on everyone's legs too." Student-athlete traffic patterns and schedules were studied to the most-minute detail (see graphic). The idea is to bring it all together in one place so that pretty much outside of classes, the facility can efficiently handle all the players' needs. One of athletic director Morgan Burke's enduring legacies will be all he has done during his 22-year tenure to upgrade facilities. Yet, when it comes to football, signifi- cant funds have been spent on the program, but in more of a band-aid approach than Burke would like. An example is the football locker room. Last summer, it was deter- mined that it was going to cost near- ly $4 million for an upgrade. But the real problem was that there wasn't enough space to get it done to the level needed. "The current locker room was one-third of the size you need to- day," said Burke, who based his comment on what he heard from Populous last summer. "You can't take a rectangular space and make it circular. It was at that point I said, 'Let's roll it all into the foot- ball master plan,' as we had obvi- ous deficiencies in other areas that needed addressed. So putting it all together made sense." One of the other areas of major concern is the weight room, which was constructed in 1989 when Mollenkopf was built. There isn't enough room for the entire team to train at the same time. While im- provements were made and weight training and workout facilities were added during the Mackey Are- na project, which was completed in 2011, the Mollenkopf weight room still is being shared by other sports with football. "Training and training methods have changed so much in the past decade that Purdue simply needs more space," Privitera said. "I am so impressed by Purdue's resilien- cy in this process and the ability of the staff to maximize what they currently have. They have figured out how to work with Plan B, but you can't do that forever and re- main competitive." Burke recognizes much of the hype in terms of football facilities has been centered around the south end zone, something that is part of the master plan. But it is clear Mol- lenkopf needs to be the priority. "The reality is we've done some things to the football training fa- cility in general, but we've hit the cycle now where we can't patch it," Burke said. "The (playing surface in) Mollenkopf is fine, but the in- structional facility in Mollenkopf was built in 1990 and is 26 years old. I can't retrofit it. "When we did the design compe- tition last fall (that Populous ulti- mately won), we said we want you to look at both the south end zone and our auxiliary training space, be- cause the auxiliary space, the kids spend more time in. And, in today's world, it also has a big impact on re- cruiting." Things being considered for in- clusion in the new football facili- ty are players' lounges, improved coaches offices, nutrition (fuel) sta- tions and even a new gateway to the facility. How fast it gets done is de- pendent on project approval by Pur- due's Board of Trustees, which could FOOTBALL PLAYER SCHEDULE – GAME WEEK 6:15 am Wake Up 6:55am Park 7:00 am Training Room / Study 9:00 Class 12:00 Lunch 12:30 pm Workout 1:20 pm Film Work/ Tape/Rehab 2:10 pm Team Meeting 2:30 pm Individual Meeting 3:20 pm Practice 5:30 pm Post‐Practice Meeting 6:00 pm Shower 6:15 pm Training Table 7 to 9 pm Homework/Study Hall 7 to 10pm Positional Film Study 10pm Go Home 1 2 3 4 5 4 5 5 6 7 9 11 8 10 Populous A diagram of the daily travel patterns of a Boilermaker football player indicates there is a lot of ground to cover in a typical day. An all-in-one training facility could save up to an hour per day for the student-athlete.