Auburn Trustees offer support for Football Performance Facility

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AUBURN, Alabama--At Friday's Auburn University Board of  Trustees meeting officials offered support for what they called a "Football Performance Facility" and Auburn's head football coach, Gus Malzahn, attended the meeting to ask for the facility to be built.

"We all agree we need to do it," said board member Charles McCrary, who said the project was discussed in a committee meeting prior to the board meeting and there is general consensus the facility needs to be built as soon as possible. No formal vote was taken on the project, but the direction of the board to President Steven Leath was to make the project a priority.

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"Dr. Leath, board of trustees, I really appreciate your support for this project," Malzahn told the group. "It is not big just now, currently, but more importantly for the future and it will allow us to continue to have a good chance to compete for championships so this is really big. I really appreciate the support."

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Following his comments to the board Malzahn left the meeting. He said he will discuss the project more at a later time, but it was currently not appropriate for him to say more than he said on Friday. The head coach has pledged $2 million of his own money for the project.

Trustee McCrary, who is from Birmingham, noted that the project is needed to support "our team" as well as "our coach" and Auburn. The athletic department and Tigers Unlimited are currently raising funds for the project, which is estimated to cost between $60-$80 million to have a facility competitive with other programs around the Southeastern Conference.

Currently, there are a large variety of construction projects on the AU campus. Officials said there is 1.3 million square feet of buildings in various stages of construction.

Also at the meeting the board commended Athletic Director Allen Greene for the athletic and academic performance of men's and women's teams during the 2018-19 academic year. 

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Auburn University president Steven Leath announced via Twitter on Wednesday the creation of a work group to explore avenues for the construction of a football-only facility

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Head coach Gus Malzahn was asked about the facility at the SEC Spring Meetings on May 29 and said, “We’re getting closer. Hopefully in the near future, we’ll get that thing kicked off.”

Auburn COO Ron Burgess will be the chair of the group, which includes trustee Mike DeMaioribus, board member, Earlon McWhorter, as well as leadership from Auburn University.

They hope to have recommendations from the group by early fall.

AD Allen Greene said on the same day that they were continuing “to have conversations” about the football facility.

247Sports reported in early May that the $60 million project was more than half funded.

The tweets from Leath on Wednesday contrast to what he told 247Sports on May 31 when he said, “This is a complicated process, like any big, complicated building. We’ve got to do a lot of due diligence of what would be involved, what would be the estimated cost, these kind of things. So, there’s no decision if we’re even going to go forward. It’s still a due diligence period."

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