On Monday afternoon, a long overdue signal of intent was received from the Indiana athletic department with regards to college sports' greatest moneymaker.
News broke that the Indiana football program would be receiving a football-only weight facility in the north end zone facility of Memorial Stadium, made possible by a "major gift" from IU alumnus and frequent supporter, Jay Wilkinson.
Wilkinson's name sake is already quite prevalent on the Bloomington campus. In the past, his $10 million donation netted Indiana's volleyball and wrestling programs a brand new, state-of-the-art facility, aptly named Wilkinson Hall. The current north end zone facility, a 25,000 square foot area first opened in 2009 – then renovated thanks to a $1 million donation from Wilkinson in 2012 – is one of the largest strength and conditioning centers in the country. It too bears he and his wife Nancy's name, the W. Jay and Nancy Wilkinson Performance Center.
Yet, all varsity sports at Indiana have access to that facility. Now, with Wilkinson's help once again, the university is able to put a specific focus on the development of the football program.
"I want to personally thank Jay Wilkinson for his generous gift to our football program, to allow us to be able to create a football-specific area for weight training and conditioning," Indiana head coach Tom Allen told reporters on Tuesday afternoon.
Allen would continue on, saying that the construction is only in the planning stages for now and that more details have not been made public just yet. According to the release, the project is set for completion in early 2024.
"This project will not only provide our football student-athletes with the necessary equipment and space to maximize their abilities and opportunities as IU student-athletes, but also the flexibility to use the space 24/7, 365 days a year," said Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson in the release.
In truth, Indiana is late to the party in having a facility dedicated for use only by the school's football program. That doesn't mean it isn't something Allen hasn't been advocating for.
In Indianapolis last week, Allen mentioned that despite priority of spending being shifted to opportunities for name, image and likeness, he'd still like to see renovations and improvements done to the facilities that house his team and the fans that watch them on Saturdays.
That's not to mention the impact it has on recruiting, player development and the furthering forward of the program as a whole. But Allen says that there's deeper reasoning to why having facilities like the ones Indiana will have under development – a more honed-in experience for the team as a whole.
"I think the area of focus has been to be able to have a concentrated area to eliminate distractions," Allen said. "I think that's where you want focused training. You want to be able to eliminate things that – we have a phrase: a distracted man is a defeated man. So, just trying to continue to enhance that part of it and to be able to brand it in a way that it's football specific, I think that's really important in recruiting and those kinds of things.
"We want to do a tremendous job of developing our players from a nutrition perspective as well as physically, their strength and development, their speed, to be able to grow as a player in those areas."
In terms of facilities, football has received periodic growth over time, but as Allen alluded to, many of the buildings and areas that his team relies on have fallen behind in the so-called arms race that surrounds these types of upgrades.
There's no denying that football is where the money resides in college sports. Those lucrative TV deals that conferences are utilizing to fuel realignment schools are using to fund recruiting? The largest chunk of it comes from football, where even at a perceived basketball school like Indiana, a half-full Memorial Stadium completely overshadows a jam-packed Assembly Hall in revenue numbers.
CollegeRaptor.com ranks the top sports by revenue for the Big Ten on a sport-by-sport basis. Indiana basketball ranks as the 15th-most marketable brand in the entire conference. And you guessed it, the 14 spots ahead of them are held by each member university's football program, including the Hoosier football program at No. 11.
"I think the genesis of it was just the idea of wanting to be able to continue to build our program and the emphasis on the football side of things here at IU," Allen said, "to be able to continue to invest in that as a program, continue to make things better. I think that's what we're trying to do in that regard."
Focus from Indiana brass on driving forward the most profitable sport that school offers is a benefit to all, a rising tide that lifts all boats. And it's been long overdue.
"It's been wonderful to see the overhaul of IU Athletics' facilities in recent years," Wilkinson said in the initial release.
Now, the question comes: what's next?
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