Stunning amenities in Oregon's new football facility

EUGENE, Ore. -- Eight years ago, a group of architects, interior designers, college football coaches and associates of Nike co-founder Phil Knight began a journey that started with visits to nine college football facilities and eventually took them to four continents. Their journey has ended this summer, at the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex, a black steel and glass, six-story tribute to innovation and competition.

At each college stop, project manager Howard Slusher's final question to the group's host was, "What would you do to make it better?"

Funded primarily by Knight and his wife Penny and named after their respective mothers Lota and Dorothie, the building contains 145,000 square feet of meeting space, instructional rooms, fitness centers, locker rooms, offices, dining facilities, lounges, auditoriums, offices and other spaces unlike any seen in a sports facility. Some of the spaces were built more than once.

"When the person who builds it just wants the best, what are you supposed to tell them?" smiled Jeff Hawkins, Oregon's Senior Associate Athletic Director for Football Administration, who was involved in the project throughout its progression.

USA TODAY Sports received an all-access tour of the complex on Wednesday. Here's what we saw:

The 25,000-square foot weight room is fortified with Brazilian Ipe wood floors, which have a reputation for being dense enough to bend a nail. Above the free weight and plyometric area is one of the world's only 40-yard electronic tracks.

Oregon's coaches asked for two broad concepts to drive the design of their spaces in the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex: comfort, and the ability to work long hours. "And Coach (John) Neal wanted aftershave in the bathrooms," joked architect Eugene Sandoval of Portland firm ZGF. Actually, Sandoval wasn't exaggerating. Interior designer Randy Stegmeier consulted with the coaches to curate the selection of men's care products placed in the coaches' locker room. And with televisions embedded in the mirror, they can catch a glimpse of the nightly news while they spray on their Burberry.

Like the players' locker room on the same level, the third-floor coaches' features individually ventilated lockers to eliminate odors, infection-free Corian surfaces, secure keypad-powered locker opening and closing, and a "magic shelf" to recharge portable electronics without plugging them in. Unlike the players', it has a feel and look described as more "stately" and "country club-like", and a four-foot deep hydrotherapy pool to ease aches and pains. Oregon's coaching staff of former football players has more than 300 years' combined experience.

For years, Oregon players have sat on a box outside the old Ducks football locker room and had their hair cut by teammates who showed aptitude with barber clippers. The new player locker room will offer a more professional setting. "Howard's Barber Shop" features a real barber chair with the Ducks' winged O on its head rest, full length mirrors, cabinets full of barber tools (though no straight razors, which are against state codes), two lounge chairs from Milan for waiting customers, and two curated wall displays of scissors, combs and razors. Not shown: An actual barber pole, mounted on the wall.

The mandate for players' locker room was "no smell." So to combat that, each German-built locker is fitted with its own ventilation system guaranteed to desiccate the sweatiest, stinkiest shoulder pads in an hour. This was one of the rooms in the building that was designed and built twice during the construction process.

The pro scout room has six computer work stations for scouts visiting campus to watch practice. It also has a pantry. "Some schools don't want pro scouts on their campus at practice," Hawkins said. "We provide them a workspace."

The Hatfield-Dowlin Complex has many, many lounges. It even has one for the media. Like an amazingly high percentage of rooms in the building, this one on the third level has a pantry, Italian furnishings, and lots of walnut. It also is attached to the press conference room, which has "wallpaper" made of Nike football leather, and chairs upholstered with the same leather found in a Ferrari. One note about the walnut: Interior designer Randy Stegmeier of Portland's Firm151 said the rejection rate for the walnut was 96 percent, meaning that out of every 100 boards available, only an average of four were deemed to be of high enough quality for this project. The remainder was kept by the provider for other work.

A neon sign in the first floor cafeteria reads, "Eat your enemies and the other food groups". The words "farm to table" were uttered shortly after we entered this room. The facility and its offerings were modeled after corporate dining settings at Google, Oracle, Nike and Genentech. Adjacent to the cafeteria is a walnut-lined dining room large enough to house all of Oregon's athletes in two seatings.

The lobby features a cantilevered display of 64 individual TV screens, each 55 inches on the diagonal, that can be combined into one display or 64 individual displays. Below them on the left as one enters the lobby is a display case of 18 maquettes dressed in miniature versions of Oregon's uniforms dating from 1894. To the right is a small, dark space called the "Ring Room", which resembles a Tiffany display. Small glass cases of bowl and championship rings, washed in yellow or green light just out from the black walls. Upon entering the space, you are enveloped in 3D sound recorded from live games at Autzen Stadium. It is the same sound engineering, by Charlie Morrow Productions, used at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

The players' lounge has a pool table made by a Portland company whose previous clients include the late Michael Jackson. It also has two foosball tables made in Barcelona that have hand-painted kickers made to look like Oregon players and the Ducks' rivals from the Pac-12. This portion of the glass-enclosed lounge opens to a terrace.

Hawkins said if you walked into the Ducks' old facility in the period between their two-a-day practices, you'd see players sprawled out all over the floor and furniture sleeping. So in the new sixth-floor players' lounge, the sofas recline into beds. In the distance are multiple gaming stations, where players use PlayStations branded with the Ducks' wing logo.

An evolving art installation representing Ducks who have "flown" to the NFL can be found on the sixth floor. Every Oregon football player who has been drafted into the NFL (121 as of this year) is represented into this sculpture, located in a quiet foyer adjacent to a family lounge. The players' initials are engraved on the ducks, which are color coded based on the round in which the player was drafted. The wire suspension allows for more ducks to be added over time. The floor of the family lounge, by the way, is covered by a hand woven rug from Nepal. Atop that sits a collection of B&B Italia sofas lined in football leather.

When running backs coach Gary Campbell came to Oregon 30 years ago, he shared an office with three other coaches that was smaller than his new one. "I used to put my head under the desk to make recruiting calls," he said. Each of Oregon's assistant coaches now has an office built on the same blueprint, with magnetic, writeable black-backed glass walls embedded with three TVs, a seating area for small meetings, a pantry, a room-length picture rail for awards and photos, and a locally made hydraulic piston-powered desktop so that they can sit or stand at their walnut desks.

Head coach Mark Helfrich's fourth-floor office at the end of the hall has glass on three sides and is perched above the practice field. Its layout was inspired by coach Mack Brown's "living room" office at Texas. In the conference room adjacent to Helfrich's office is one of the building's coolest features: a Batman-like private staircase to his parking space in the garage four stories below.

The "War Room", in the center of a restricted section of the fourth floor called "Area 51", is accessible by less than 40 people within the program. The room, primarily used for recruiting analysis and final game preparations, is surrounded by black-backed glass that is writable and magnetic, is embedded with televisions and touchscreens, and all equipment can be hidden in barely visible cabinets. Its centerpiece is a 35-foot-long table with 22 chairs, each positioned directly under a light. This was one of the rooms that was built more than once.

Position meeting rooms on the fourth and fifth levels include custom Herman Miller chairs in the Ducks' color palette, tribute walls featuring the jersey numbers of former Oregon greats and open spaces in front of the display screens for physical demonstrations of technique.

Restrooms in the building feature wall-size, hand-laid mosaics of Ann Sacks tile designed to portray the Ducks' winning bowl game rings.

Daniel Uthman, USA TODAY Sports' senior editor for Colleges, is onTwitter @DanUthman.