The football practice facility will be officially finished this month.
The 90,000 square foot facility houses a full football field along with area around the field for player safety.
"It's a big open structure, to me, it looks like a massive barn," said Randy Byars, director of facility operations.
When preparing for the project Byars said that many other school's facilities were looked at to help with what the structure would look like and consist of.
"We were pretty familiar with others in the SEC. We see those fairly often, but we also looked at some schools in Texas, some schools in Virginia, West Virginia, Clemson, Tennessee and then we did some Internet surveys of other places," Byars said.
Byars said that the coaches also helped in the process by talking about facilities they had seen when they had been coaches at other schools.
"I think there was a combination of learning from others," Byars said.
Although the football team could begin practicing in the facility on July 30th, the team doesn't report to practice until the beginning of August.
The new field will be replacing an outdoor artificial turf field so now the Tigers have an indoor facility and two outdoor fields.
"I'm definitely excited about it," said senior full back Chris Humphries. "I'm glad they got that in before I graduated."
Construction is also occurring in the Tatum weight room.
"The total project that is approved by the trustees is 16.5 million. One is this indoor facility with the outdoor practice fields, and then it attaches to the existing Tatum Strength and Conditioning Center. " Byars said.
The renovating of the weight room will consist of painting the walls, placing new floors, and adding new lights.
"The indoor project is really costing us $15 million, the Tatum weight room is $1.5 million." Byars said.
The facility is also capable of helping other sports out with practicing, such as soccer, softball and baseball.
"It can be used for practice purposes for any other sport that would make sense," Byars said.
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