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Welcome to the Ponderosa Palace

The first thing you see when you enter LSU's newly renovated Football Operations and Performance Nutrition Center is a giant Eye of the Tiger
The first thing you see when you enter LSU's newly renovated Football Operations and Performance Nutrition Center is a giant Eye of the Tiger (Ron Higgins)

I have seen the future of college football facilities.

Costing $28 million paid from private donations, LSU’s renovated Football Ops building is now officially called the LSU Football Operations and Performance Nutrition Center.

But after Wednesday’s official ribbon cutting, followed a meal and a tour for media and other invited guests, simply call the renovated digs “The Ponderosa Palace” in honor of the Tigers’ long-time practice field nickname bestowed by former LSU head coach Charles McClendon.

I came to this conclusion after dining on beef tenderloin, grilled red snapper with pineapple mango salsa and bananas foster at the cafeteria (a.k.a. nutrition center), checking out the virtual reality racing game in the Tyrann Mathieu Player’s Lounge, soaking in a 4D video experience that replicates the sound and sights (empty flasks not included) of running out of the Tiger Stadium dressing room tunnel on a football Saturday night, dipping my hand in hot and cold training room whirlpools each stretching probably 20 yards in length and then relaxing in one of the 150 sleep pod lockers in the Phillips-Bordelon Locker Room that continually has fresh air pumped into it.

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My first thought of the Ponderosa Palace echoed LSU coach Ed Orgeron’s assessment.

“You have to have great facilities to compete, I believe this is the very best,” Orgeron said. “It’s going to help in recruiting, we’ve already had some recruits call us wanting to see it.

“I think there’s going be a lot of locker rooms (at competing colleges) torn up fast.”

No doubt about that. In the college football arms race where millions of dollars are spent trying to attract the best of the best recruits, LSU’s renovations have done that and more.

Brainstorming from college athletic veterans such as LSU director of athletic training Jack Marucci, equipment manager Greg Stringfellow and director of wellness Shelly Mullenix and a group of architects with limitless imagination has given the Tigers the most-cutting edge functional practice facility in college football.

Yes, like other big-time college powerhouses, the Ponderosa Palace has its share of bells and whistles designed for a recruiting “wow” factor.

But it also primarily addresses the concerns of an athlete’s daily training, which is nutrition as well as rest and recovery.

Attention to these details in the renovation is spot on.

The Performance Nutrition Center

Open to all LSU athletes, the food is first-class, thanks to the addition of executive chef Michael Johnson. He held the same position for the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks where he oversaw game day food operations for the Seahawks’ home stadium and for the team.

“There’s a world of difference cooking in this job and what I did in Seattle where I cooked the same food every day and on a massive scale,” he said. “Here, we’re making smaller amounts of food and it’s changing daily.

“It’s a chef’s dream to have variety in menu and not the see same thing every day. It’s why you want to go in this business, to see difference daily. It’s a wonderful challenge.”

Johnson’s menu philosophy is simple.

“We know these are young men and women away from home, and they have a certain comfort zone in what they like to eat,” Johnson said. “We put some comfortable food out for them.

“Then, we push the envelope a bit hoping to educate and encourage them to try new foods. I have to reach back to what I liked to eat when I was 18, so I also use my 15-year old daughter as a sounding board.”

There are also staff dieticians to track trends, adjusting a student-athlete’s diet based on the results of a newly introduced program using a DEXA scanner.

“We learn new stuff every year about food,” said Mullenix, who had already been working with LSU athletic department sports-registered dieticians. “Research always pops up what’s good for you and what’s bad for you.

“This facility (nutrition center) is tremendous. I’ve walked in here the last three mornings and there’s been a different smell all three days.”

The Phillips-Bordelon Locker Room

Leave it to the inquisitive Marucci, who in his spare time the last two decades has created the No. 1 selling baseball bats line in the major leagues, to address the basic enemy of all athletes.

Fatigue.

Marucci knew about “sleep rooms” for teams, like when he was visiting Atlanta for a sleep study conference and dropped in on the Atlanta Braves who were in the process of building the new SunTrust Field about four years ago,

“They asked me what I thought about a sleep room,” Marucci said. “So, we began thinking about it here on a football side. That’s a lot of room and would they really use it? The thought process was making something at their locker that’s functional.”

Why does a football player need somewhere to nap?

Because during preseason practice in which players are basically at the football ops building for at least 12 hours daily, time is of the essence.

After a morning practice, players have to shower, go find some lunch and then run to their apartment or dorm to hopefully grab a nap before the afternoon session of meetings and more practice.

The naps, said Marucci, are essential.

“Here’s how you predict injuries – fatigue,” Marucci said. “If you don’t have enough rest, you can’t focus. The schedule for these players usually starts at 6 in the morning and goes to 8:30 at night.”

Stringfellow, who’s starting his 15th year as LSU’s equipment manager, said in past years players would often attempt to sleep on the locker room floor instead of leaving the building.

“It’s not the cleanest place to sleep,” he said.

But then, Marucci saw the sleep pods in the first-class section of airplanes.

“When I brought it to the architects (the Kansas City-based firm HNTB), their eyes got big,” Marucci said. “My vision for the pods was finding a way we could put something in the dressing room that would help them with hydration, relaxation, meditation, sleep and recovery.”

Also, in order to keep the locker room as odor-free as possible, Stringfellow suggested a separate mud room with shoulder pad racks, shoe dryers and separated ventilation.

“We have fresh air pumped into the storage that you pull out underneath the lockers and above the lockers,” Stringfellow said.

The bottom line is better time management that adds minutes of rest back into a player’s day.

Orgeron said the sleep pods will allow him to schedule a nap time for his team daily during the preseason.

“Say we have a walk through in the morning,” Orgeron said. “We have to give our guys three hours before the afternoon practice.

“Normally, they’d have three hours to sleep, go find something to eat and go back to their dorms or apartments to grab a nap.

“Now, they can shower, walk in our cafeteria to eat and then walk to the locker room to sleep. We’ll dim the lights, keep it quiet so they can nap .

“Not leaving the building is going to save our players at least another half hour of sleep.”

The finished product

For seven years, the renovations lived only in drawings and ideas with the hope donations could be obtained.

“This is a culmination of a lot of people’s efforts and a great deal of work,” said Rick Perry, CEO of the Tiger Athletic Foundation that raised funds to finance the construction.

And now that it is reality?

Marucci said it’s better than he anticipated.

“I knew this Sunday night when I saw our players go into that new dressing room for the first time,” Marucci said. “To see their expressions and excitement was probably one of the most gratifying experiences that you’ll ever have. But there was also their appreciation of `I can’t believe we have something like this.’ It’s nothing what they thought it would be like.

“We’ve got a few touches left. But it’s perfect.”

For Orgeron, he couldn’t have asked for a better gift just more than a week before the start of preseason practice.

“The one thing we wanted to do when we started to build the facility was put most of the money into the players,” Orgeron said. “It turned out absolute unique.”


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