The original IPF was going to have a competition track and a track straightaway with a force plate in it so our world renown SMU biomechanist Peter Weyand (https://www.smu.edu/News/Experts/Peter-Weyand) could conduct unique research on speed. Right now he works out of a building about the size of my living room that includes a *drumroll* horse treadmill.
Between that and indoor track meets you would have thousands of kids (ie: football players) from all around the south on your campus multiple times per year. You could use that as part of football camps to provide an experience unique to SMU that basically no one else in the country would have. That would give you a marketing and recruiting bump.
As it stands now now, we will have have a brick building with 80 yards of field turf and an event center. No weight room, no track. A UNT-level facility plus an irrelevant-to-athletes Miller-event-center-esque area.
So the big 12 level of commitment that we are not living up to is exemplified by Texas Tech - who has an 80 yd indoor practice facility that also does NOT have a track. Exactly like ours. Got it.
What I like (conceptually) about our tennis complex and natatorium is that they give SMU the ability to attract top regional athletes to the campus to train and the ability to host major events, etc.
The IPF shouldn't just be about football. It should be the crown jewel for Dallas area athletes and athletic research. It should be a place for elite athletes to come and train, a track that could host Olympic level events, a place to host combines and epic summer camps, a place to do research. On and on. If it's not that, my vote would be to wait until such a time as it can be.
Once it's built, it's going to be harder to ever "unbuild" it. What's the old saying, "There's never enough time to do it right, but there seems to always be enough time to do it over."
"It's a couple hundred million dollars. I'm not losing sleep over it." -- David Miller
PerunaPunch wrote:We already have a place to practice.
What I like (conceptually) about our tennis complex and natatorium is that they give SMU the ability to attract top regional athletes to the campus to train and the ability to host major events, etc.
The IPF shouldn't just be about football. It should be the crown jewel for Dallas area athletes and athletic research. It should be a place for elite athletes to come and train, a track that could host Olympic level events, a place to host combines and epic summer camps, a place to do research. On and on. If it's not that, my vote would be to wait until such a time as it can be.
Once it's built, it's going to be harder to ever "unbuild" it. What's the old saying, "There's never enough time to do it right, but there seems to always be enough time to do it over."
Well fortunately you don't get a vote. We need a place for our football team to practice when the weather is bad. That's it. We don't need all that other b.s., and not sure anyone noticed but we don't have a men's track team. Our stadium has a damn nice weight room and lots of other bells and whistles - no need to create a duplicate.
We are proceeding with an IPF that fits our needs. If any of you eeyores want to pitch in some money to add something you think is missing, you better hurry up cause we are about to break ground, and I for one am glad we can move on to something more important - which is basically everything else.
gostangs- you are correct. we would never want any of our facilities to be compared with P5 quality as we will never get invited to participate at that level. however, our facilities will be very impressive at the DII level.
Our IPF will be as good as almost any in the state. This is not an issue. Find something else to complain about. I guess those of you that were complaining about not having an IPF for the last five years are having separation anxiety with the thought of not having anything to complain about.
Move the Meadows museum to the old natatorium location and put the IPF where Meadows is located. It can then be attached to the athletic offices, weight room and even the stadium.
As being one of the ΓÇ£criticsΓÇ¥ of the IPF, my main criticism is that they publish a rendering of what itΓÇÖs going to look like and get everyone pumped up then itΓÇÖs announced and all you hear is ΓÇ£well itΓÇÖs this decent little thing here. That leaves people to feel they got a bait and switch. If they had been honest with the rendering and showing what itΓÇÖs really going to be, I would have been excited. IΓÇÖm thinking we were going to do the original rendering but NTCC decided to build one so we had to push the button to launch prematurely.
We were going to do the original, until someone rightfully pointed out it was about 20M too expensive - and non of our donors was stupid enough to do that (which is how they got wealthy in the first place). Now we are only going to do a really, really expensive one, instead of an insanely and offensively expensive one.
gostangs wrote:We were going to do the original, until someone rightfully pointed out it was about 20M too expensive - and non of our donors was stupid enough to do that (which is how they got wealthy in the first place). Now we are only going to do a really, really expensive one, instead of an insanely and offensively expensive one.
You mean an IPF doesn't need to be LEED certified??????
