Mullen will be heavily involved in planning Gators’ new facility

A week ago the Florida Gators announced plans to build a $65 million dollar stand alone football facility as part of a $130 million dollar master renovation and building plan.

After the Gators’ Pro Day on Wednesday Dan Mullen broke down what he thinks it means to the program.

“I’m really excited, I think for us our goal is to build the premiere facility in all of America. And when I look at a premiere facility it is the ultimate facility to develop players,” Mullen said. “Everything about our new facility will be to maximize the performance of our players. The efficiency, to be extremely efficient and everything is around the development of players, how to make them the best players on the field, off the field in every aspect of life. How do we help them become the best they can be.”

Mullen had previously said that he’s glad Florida hadn’t built the facility yet because it would allow him to be apart of the design and construction process. Previously the plan was to have construction be underway if not already then soon. Some time last summer Florida Athletic Director and the other UAA members involved in the process realized they were spinning their wheels. The initial plan was to renovate McKethan Stadium and build a three story football facility in a small corner of campus next to the football practice fields.

It was a Band-Aid, not a long term solution, so they scrapped the plans.

Now, the baseball team will get a new stadium on another side of campus and the football facility will be bigger (130,000 square feet) where McKethan Stadium currently resides.

“It’s great to hear we’re getting a brand new baseball stadium that’s accessible to fans and accessible to everybody to get in,” Mullen said. “Obviously with how we’re performing in baseball, we need that.”

However, a brand new stadium takes time to build and Florida is still raising money for that project. The plan is to have the baseball team finish the 2018 season and 2019 season before they’re ready to move to the new facility. That means the stand-alone football facility is more than 20 months away from breaking ground. That means they’re only in the very infant stages of planning the new football facility.

Mullen and Stricklin built a state of the art facility at Mississippi State. During that process Mullen had the opportunity to check out other facilities and see what other programs deemed necessary for what they needed. He recently went and visited Clemson’s brand new football building but Florida’s head coach has more than that in mind. He doesn’t want to just see how football teams are running operations but major corporations as well.

“I wanna go visit Google. I wanna see where do people wanna work? What environments are the most efficient working environments? The big question is why,” he said. “Why do you have it this way, why do you have it that way? So that we can learn. We’re about development and performance, so how do we get the top performance out of our players? Well, if one company from anywhere around the world is getting top performance out of people that work there, why is that? What’re they doing that separates them? We wanna make sure we try to incorporate it so we can them find every advantage possible.”

Nick de la Torre
A South Florida native, Nick developed a passion for all things sports at a very young age. His love for baseball was solidified when he saw Al Leiter’s no-hitter for the Marlins live in May of 1996. He was able to play baseball in college but quickly realized there isn’t much of a market for short, slow outfielders that hit around the Mendoza line. Wanting to continue with sports in some capacity he studied journalism at the University of Central Florida. Nick got his first start in the business as an intern for a website covering all things related to the NFL draft before spending two seasons covering the Florida football team at Bleacher Report. That job led him to GatorCountry. When he isn’t covering Gator sports, Nick enjoys hitting way too many shots on the golf course, attempting to keep up with his favorite t.v. shows and watching the Heat, Dolphins and Marlins. Follow him on twitter @NickdelatorreGC