Football Facilities
Strength & Conditioning / Personal Performance Center
Naming Opportunity: $5 Million – Reserved
The centerpiece of the expanded Illinois football facility will be the addition of a new personal performance center, providing the Illini players the latest in speed and power training and technology. Spend only a minute in this new weight facility and you will understand the work necessary to succeed on the field. You will never forget the sounds: The bass from the stereo. The clank of steel against steel. Shouts between teammates. Coaches barking instructions. This personal performance center will be the epicenter of the off-season, the heartbeat of the Illini football program. From dawn until dark, players will toil against piles of steel and rubber, their muscles burning for mercy but their hearts urging them forward. Hours a day, hundreds of days a year, these men battle against themselves, pushing their personal limits to the point of exhaustion, galvanizing their bodies and their minds in preparation for the handful of fall Saturdays when they have the privilege of donning the orange and blue and competing against the likes of Michigan and Ohio State. Success on the field is never an accident, and championships are built long before a team ever tees up the first ball of the season. The new Strength & Conditioning/Personal Performance Center will be the home of champions.
Locker Room
Naming Opportunity: $1 Million
Fifteen minutes before kickoff against another formidable Big Ten opponent and the atmosphere in the Illinois locker room is electric. Players are scattered about the room, lost in their own thoughts, the emotion evident on their faces. Some pace nervously, headsets covering their ears. Others sit silently in front of their lockers, their jaws set, their eyes fixed on the floor. Coaches huddle quietly with individual players, imparting words of encouragement or last minute instructions. Ten minutes to go. Shoes are tied and re-tied. Equipment managers buzz around the room distributing towels and applying black eye paint. A few players kneel in prayer. Five minutes. Coach Zook calls the players to the middle of the room for his last words. The players huddle tightly around their leader, strength emanating from his words. One minute. A moment of silence, followed by the rhythmic beating of the Marching Illini drum corps gathered outside the door. With a shout, the players rise in unison and swarm through the locker room door, their emotions ragged, the adrenaline surging through their veins. Thousands of young men will pass through those doors in the name of the Fighting Illini. Put your name over the door and change their lives forever.
Squad Room
Naming Opportunity: $500,000
Like any dynamic organization, the Illinois football team frequently assembles in its entirety – players, coaches, trainers, equipment managers, strength and conditioning staff, and academic advisors – to review the past, discuss the present, and plan for the future. These meetings, which can serve a broad array of purposes, from reviewing film of the previous game or the upcoming opponent to listening to NCAA presentations on the dangers of gambling or substance abuse, are held in the Squad Room, located on the first floor of the Illinois football facility. The players spend a great deal of time in this room, which can be subdivided by a collapsible wall into offensive and defensive team rooms. It features comfortably appointed stadium seating and a computerized digital video system with two video screens. The walls are decorated with motivational slogans and insignias from the numerous bowl games in which Illinois has participated. The Squad Room represents the union of all the components comprising the Illinois football family, and by naming this important room you will forever become a part of that family.
Sports Medicine Facility
Naming Opportunity: $500,000 – Reserved
Winning makes everything better, including the sting of injuries. Sundays following Illini victories are joyous times in the Illinois training room. Players lounge on tables, brazenly re-living the highlights from the previous day’s game and recapping Saturday night’s victory parties. Trainers happily buzz about the room, packing the previous day’s bumps and bruises in ice, administering massages on sore muscles, and providing rehabilitation instructions for those battling lingering aches and pains. Even the hot and cold whirlpools seem to hum contentedly through the glass wall separating the hydrotherapy room from the main training room.
The Illinois training room is a pivotal venue in the Illinois football facility. Injuries are an unfortunate part of football, but the Illinois sports medicine staff, armed with a state-of-the-art treatment facility, works tirelessly to ensure that Illinois’ players spend the bulk of their time on the field and not on the sidelines.
Equipment Room
Naming Opportunity: $500,000
It is twenty minutes after another Illini victory and somewhere, deep in the recesses of the Illinois football facility, a bell is ringing. Players in the locker room, rejoicing in the euphoria of another hard-fought Illini win, respond to the clanging bell and raise their voices in unison, cheering the victory tradition. For the vast majority of the year, this bell, hanging from the wall in the Illinois equipment room, remains voiceless, waiting expectantly for its next call to action. In the fall, however, it springs to life, enthusiastically rung by an Illini star performer following every Illinois victory. The Illinois equipment room, which adjoins the home locker room, is a hub of activity in the football facility and houses many more items necessary to the football team’s success, though perhaps none more symbolic than the victory bell.
Every piece of equipment – from cleats to blocking sleds – passes through the equipment room. The room also serves as the informal social center for former Illini greats on football Saturdays, and any given fall weekend will find it filled with the most famous names in Illinois football history. There are many necessary, but often unseen, cogs to the engine of Illinois football, but perhaps none is more important, and more steeped in tradition and player appreciation, than the Illinois equipment room. Put your name on the Illinois equipment room and ensure that its traditions continue for years to come.
Head Coach’s Suite
Naming Opportunity: $500,000 – Reserved
Stepping into Coach Ron Zook’s office is like stepping into the eye of the storm. All is calm around you, but the energy flowing through the room is palpable, making the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. If you are the head coach of a Big Ten football program, you are the clearinghouse of all things related to the success of your program. The coach’s to-do list is daunting: There is film to be watched. There are practices to be planned. There are recruits to be called. And there is a steady stream of players and coaches knocking on your door, ready to discuss the upcoming game, to tell you about the “A” they received on their latest exam, or to give you the latest on their baby sister. All of this is geared toward taking the field at beautiful Memorial Stadium – the green turf and historic brick providing the backdrop out Coach Zook’s office windows. Success starts at the top. And we’ve got the right guy at the top.
Recruiting Lounge
Naming Opportunity: $500,000 – Reserved
The Illinois recruiting lounge, located on the top floor of the football training facility, serves many important purposes for the sustained success of the Illini football program. Most importantly, it serves as the “front door” of the program for recruits visiting the University on fall Saturdays and over winter weekends. By spending a few minutes in the recruiting lounge, high school prospects cannot help but recognize the history of the proud Illini football tradition. Pictures of past greats decorate the walls, and championship trophies, including those handed out in the traditional “rivalry” contests, decorate the tables. When combined with the skill and energy of noted recruiters Coach Zook and his staff, the recruiting lounge helps to ensure that this proud tradition will continue for generations to come.
Memorial Stadium Academic Center
Naming Opportunity :$500,000 – Reserved
Illinois student-athletes are the best in the country. They compete for championships on the playing field, and they earn their degrees off it. The University of Illinois and the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics remain focused on the true purpose of this great University: educating and molding today’s youth into tomorrow’s leaders. Due to the significant time constraints and athletic pressures placed on the Illini student-athletes, every effort is made to help them succeed in the classroom. The Illinois Academic Services Center at Memorial Stadium is a valuable resource for the football team, providing them with the technology and guidance necessary to achieve their academic goals.
Position Meeting Rooms
- Quarterback Meeting Room: $100,000
- Running Back Meeting Room: $100,000
- Wide Receiver Meeting Room: $100,000
- Tight End Meeting Room: $100,000
- Offensive Line Meeting Room: $100,000
- Linebacker Meeting Room: $100,000
- Secondary Meeting Room: $100,000
- Defensive Line Meeting Room: $100,000
As football has evolved, it has become an increasingly cerebral game. While it will always center on the basics of the game – blocking and tackling, running and receiving – the offensive and defensive schemes used to implement these fundamentals involve a dizzying array of complex contingencies, communications, and reactions. Though the fans witness the physical manifestations of these mental gymnastics on Saturday afternoons, they do not see the hours players spend in darkened rooms watching film or memorizing weekly playbooks. The position meeting rooms in the Illinois football facility are the players’ classrooms and the coaches are their professors. Each of these rooms, one devoted to each position on the field, is an integral part of the team’s success on Saturday afternoons. Naming a position meeting room will help ensure that the Illini players are as prepared mentally for each game as they are physically.
