Sumlin discusses facilities upgrades, long-term vision

On the facilities as a whole...

"From your standpoint, you've got a reaction, and that reaction will be the same with our current players and student-athletes we're trying to recruit. The impression, we wanted the wow factor and I think we achieved that. It's also functional. It also speaks to the commitment from the University, but also to the player development — the Davis Center, the R.C. Slocum Nutrition Center, the locker room and now the training area.

"It's all about player development, player wellness, and I think you can see that. There's a lot of bells and whistles in there, but there's also a lot of things that are there to help maximize performance, whether it's the meeting rooms or the training rooms and the locker room."

On the players reporting and seeing it...

"It'll be great. They'll report and we have meetings tomorrow here in Hagner, we'll have dinner upstairs in the Nutrition Center, and then we'll come back and get back to work in those other rooms and we'll get going."

On comparing this to any other facilities...

"We took our time — although it's only year three, we set out in the beginning — with Justin Moore and Jason with Populous and Sam Torn, really sitting down and talking about what we wanted to achieve in steps. The lobby is fabulous, and that's more for the fans, more for a recruiting standpoint, but we were concerned about current players and future players and where they're going to be.

"The stadium is going to be wonderful for fan experience, but the area that we're concerned about, like I said, is player development. That has to do with our meeting rooms and training and wellness and everything to maximize your talent. I think we achieved that."

On having access to things like this at this level...

"It's extremely important. We went around the country and tried to look at who had what we thought were the best facilities, as far as what we were trying to do, in the country. Whether it was our lobby area — I think we achieved that — to the meeting room/locker room, which we saw in a couple different places, we kind of sponged off of those guys and then we went to our training room.

"I think as players go, as student-athletes go, you can ask guys to do a lot of things if you treat them the right way and if you expect the best performance out of them and give them the best environment to be in. I think they appreciate that."

On the players' first reaction...

"I hope it makes them more pumped. Any time there's something new, players react to that. It shows them that we care as coaches, our administration cares, the University cares, and when you have something like this it also gives you an expectation. You treat someone first-class, you want first-class performance and first-class actions. To me, those go hand-in-hand and the expectations for something like that, we'll get to that in the meeting. This is nice stuff, but you better play in a way that deserves to be around here."

On his vision when he got to A&M and how it compares to the new reality...

"You'd be surprised. It doesn't seem like it, but from Day 1 we had some plans going on with a lot of different things, from uniforms to things that had been kept quiet. From behind the scenes, since December of that time, we've been working on a lot of things — the Davis Center was already in the works and Larry Jackson had a lot to do with the floor design, the R.C. Slocum center, the lobby.

"And like I said, I can't thank our university enough, I can't thank our administration enough, I can't thank Sam Torn enough. In the 12th Man Foundation he worked all the time with Justin Moore, who had a huge part in the design and development of this project. And it turned out to be as nice a facility as there is in the country."