Steve Spurrier Is Right About Facilities

Steve Spurrier: "Some day we're all going to have big, fancy beautiful facilities, and guess what? Somebody is still going to lose."

— Josh Kendall (@JoshatTheState) January 8, 2015

Steve Spurrier said this in an interview yesterday, and it's profound in its simplicity. It's easy to get caught up in the facilities arms race and wonder how long until your school has a waterfall to match Alabama's or whatever. Truth is, facilities only matter up to a certain extent.

There is a point of diminishing returns, and personally, I think we're probably hitting it soon if we haven't already in the current era. It's like in the ESPN 30for30 "Pony Exce$$" where it pointed out that some SWC teams cheated and never got much of a benefit from it. Facilities upgrades are not against NCAA rules, of course, but the same principle applies. If everyone gets in on it, then it'll be other factors that ultimately decide who wins and loses.

Thanks to the twin cash explosions of the College Football Playoff and the SEC Network, there's going to be more money than ever in the conference. We've seen it go to coaches this offseason, and it will go to facilities as well. It'll be fun to see the new structures, but they probably don't matter a ton in reality.

@ragjuf A former player who writes for my site said he didn't care about facilities but his biggest regret was going to an Adidas school

— Kevin Trahan (@k_trahan) September 10, 2014