McKewon: Nebraska football’s humungous new complex is full of light and built for science

Three levels — with a bank of skylights. Two sets of stairs leading to more areas inside the Osborne Legacy Complex, as it’s named.

This is no ordinary football building roughly 20 reporters got to see on Wednesday. The Osborne Legacy Complex is not quite finished — workers and lifts were seen during the mini-tour — and it’s nothing like the current North Stadium setup.

The wide halls would fit 10 or more regular-sized folks. Weight room ceiling fans have the circumference of a backyard pool. And speaking of pools, Nebraska has two giants for recovery, and one of them with a big slab in the middle, where a board displays information. Players walk around it as they recover.

The building has a scientific, industrial vibe to it. You can hear the fan whirrs, like a machine. Built for work. Built for football.

It took five years, between NU announcing it in 2019 — as Scott Frost ducked out of the post-event soiree — and when it’ll be fully finished, but it’s something to behold. Particularly the weight room, large enough to hold the Huskers’ whole 145-man roster, though strength and conditioning coach Corey Campbell doesn’t work out the entire team at once.

Campbell, effectively the first hire coach Matt Rhule made when he took the head job, had reporters surrounding him as he stood next to the adjustable, black-turfed incline hill that Nebraska uses for resistance running.

“Fifteen percent,” Campbell said when asked how steep the incline can go. Other football programs may have a hill, he said, but they can’t adjust the incline. Opposite that hill was black-turfed set of steps that looked every bit as daunting as the hill.

The weight room is functional, unfussy and full of light-giving windows — a prerequisite of former Nebraska Athletic Director Bill Moos, who wanted this building as much as anyone did — that look out onto the practice fields and toward Cook Pavilion, NU’s first indoor practice facility. There are four digital displays hanging from the ceiling that can be a clock, a leaderboard or information Campbell wants to relay.

The weight room is close to the recovery pools, the first stop inside the building proper.

“We’re making sure we’re getting in here as soon as we can after practice to start that recovery process as fast we can,” NU coordinator of sports science Mitch Cholewinski said. “So if we’re coming off a practice and I want them to get in a cold tub, they will get in here, after practice, within 30 seconds if they really want to.”

The cold tub “is just as cold as an ice bath,” Cholewinski said. “We can get that water down pretty miserably cold. We can get it down right around 42, 43 degrees.”

The room gets packed, Cholewinski, but this feature — tubs that allow movement during recovery — is part of Nebraska’s recruiting pitch to athletes.

So, too, might the barber shop — yes there is one — and multiple player areas.

Reporters didn’t get to see all of the facility — not even half of it.

There is a training table soon to come online — Nebraska director of football nutrition Kristin Coggin said Wednesday an outside vendor will run that operation — and there are meeting rooms, coaches’ offices and the front entrance of the facility, where the red hood juts outward toward the East Stadium plaza. Presumably, when it’s done, NU will want to give a full tour.

Even at 95% complete, the Osborne Legacy Complex is one thing for sure: Huge.