As South Carolina athletics director Ray Tanner welcomed media members to a tour of the Gamecocks new $50 million football operations building, he already was anticipating what some of the reaction to the building might be.
“You are going to have cynics, you are going to have people saying, ‘Is this really necessary?’ ” Tanner said Monday.
Yes, it was, South Carolina coach Will Muschamp said.
The Cyndi and Kenneth Long Family Football Operations Center brings everything Gamecock football under one roof for the first time in the program’s history. The team’s fractured facilities, with coaches’ offices and the locker room on opposite ends of Williams-Brice Stadium and the practice fields a 10-minute walk from both, was a club used against the team in recruiting, Muschamp said.