Aside from coaches, geographical proximity, reputation, and academics it seems many recruits have sited facilities as a major strength of the schools they decide to attend. It's certainly not everything but it's hard not to believe that to some degree, LSU's football facilities upgrade played a part in lifting the program to where it is now. I just finished reading this document about SEC athletic facilities and how it has become a cut-throat arms race and it seems to me if your not building something new, renovating something, are bringing to bare some new ideas you're falling behind. It's like computers, when you buy a new state of the art PC someone else is already in the process of making something better and someone else is beginning to draw up plans to make you look down-right obsolete. I know our football operations building is pretty new and pretty state of the art... at least I'm under that impression, to be honest, how many of us have really taken a critical look at it and compared it to those of other top schools like Florida, OSU, etc...? We also just finished the West Upper expansion. So basically it feels like we're keeping pace... Anyone have any ideas on this, are we shooting par right now, outperforming most of even the better programs, or are we resting on our laurels ignorant to the fact that others are still moving forward? I'm going to link to the article about "Building SEC Empires". It was published about a year ago. I thought it was a really interesting read. It's about the Gamecocks trying to keep pace with the rest of the SEC and gets pretty detailed in predicting what to expect in the near future and looking at what all the other schools are currently up to, including LSU of course. The link below is to the article in PDF format. It's about 5MB in size. Let me know if it doesn't work for whatever reason. LINK TO "BUILDING SEC EMPIRES" I'd be rude to not include a few pics of LSU's digs even thought most of us have seen them! Here's the LINK TO THE TOUR of it on LSU's website.
It's a constantly revolving door. Schools upgrade facilities all of the time and the newest always move to the top of the list. LSU is competitive everywhere except the baseball stadium and that's about to be fixed. Our Natatorium needs replacing, too. The lower bowl in Tiger stadium is 80 years old and will need replacing within 20 years, maybe sooner.
Speaking of stadium upgrades, you should see the stadium at UT in Austin. They are replacing or adding seats in the north endzone, and by my estimation, are nowhere near being finished. I've heard the response to the season ticket holders that are adversely affected if they're not done: SOL. I find it amazing that the facilities folks can make major changes WITHOUT it disrupting some games.
