College football recruiting is a never-ending process. That’s certainly the case here at the University of Iowa, where the Stew and Lenore Hansen Football Performance Center sees hundreds of recruits each year.
Let’s take a look inside to see what it’s like to be recruited by the Hawkeyes.
“The way you’ll see the building flow, it flows really well for our guys,” Iowa Football Director of Recruiting Tyler Barnes said. “It’s efficient for our guys.”
Barnes starts us on the second floor.
“Down this hallway, you’re gonna get a chance to see all of our position meeting rooms,” Barnes said. “Within this building, we’re really lucky. We’ve got our player locker room, our everyday locker room, we have our position meeting rooms, we have our team room. We have one of the best and biggest football only weight rooms in the country that’s hard to miss.”
You can say that again. The 23,000-square foot weight room is the crown jewel of the football building and the home-away-from- home for strength and conditioning coach Chris Doyle.
“We’re a blue-collar, tough, hard-nosed football program and everything we do — it starts in that weight room down there and ends in that weight room down there,” Barnes said. “That’s a huge credit to Coach Doyle. All of our success on the field, our NFL opportunities, it all starts and ends down in that weight room.”
“We get down into this area here. This is our NFL area here,” Barnes said. “You’re gonna see some of the current NFL players, former NFL players highlighted on each side that did play for Coach Ferentz and did train with Coach Doyle downstairs.
More than 150 Hawkeyes have gone to the NFL since 2000. Barnes says having a visual to represent that impressive number makes quite impact with recruits.
“You can say the numbers, you can push the names, but being able to see all the guys on the wall right there that’s pretty special,” Barnes said. “Again, that’s the culmination of the last 19 years and that’s really the proof we have that we can develop football players with the best of them.”
Practice is another important place for the program’s player development, so potential Hawkeyes will also check out the indoor practice field — an amenity that’s a now the standard in big-time college football.
“We’ve got two, 100-yard, turf fields on the far side as well,” Barnes said. “That’s just for our football athletes there, so again anything you’re gonna need as a football player, anything you can dream of is gonna be within this facility. Anything that’s gonna help you become a better football player, it’s all under the house right here for ya.”
Watch the video above for the full experience.
We’ll have more in part two of the Iowa recruiting tour, including a look at some of the player’s hangouts in the football building on Local 4 News at 6 and 10 on Wednesday.
For more Hawkeye football coverage, follow @AdamJRossow and @HawkeyeHQ on Twitter — and now Facebook — and Hawkeye Headquarters on OurQuadCities.com all season.
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