Hlas: New-look Hawkeyes digging new digs

It's been eight years since your last visit to Kinnick Stadium, Illinois. That seems like a long time for a border school from the same conference, but the Big Ten moves in mysterious ways.

Sharp video screens and a crisp sound system weren't in Kinnick when last you were. That huge, sleek structure that has risen above the stadium to the immediate east will be the university's new Children's Hospital.

And that brick colossus to the near northwest of the stadium? That's Iowa's new football building. It's a big boy, isn't it?

Theorizing about the causes of the rebirth of Hawkeye football has been in progress for a few weeks now inside Iowa's borders. But now outsiders are interested in how the Hawkeyes have gone from a fairly dull 5-year stretch to a 5-0 record this season fortified by last week's win at Wisconsin.

What has brought an apparent change to the way Iowa is finishing games and playing in general? Kirk Ferentz didn't change a piece of his coaching staff.

A switch to morning practices? Maybe. Players who were tired of mediocre results and banded together to be better? Quite possibly. An off-season soul-searching by Ferentz and his staff? That seems a fair assumption.

A quarterback and teammates who have made plays when plays have needed to be made? They certainly haven't hurt.

But give Iowa's new football complex - the official title is 'performance center” - a substantial slice of credit, too.

There may be those who think a $55 million, 178,000-square foot facility built exclusively for a specific athletics team at a state university borders on insane and obscene no matter who's paying for it. (A $5 million chunk came from Bruce Rastetter in 2008. He is now president of the Iowa Board of Regents. He isn't necessarily as popular in other parts of the university as he is in the football performance center.)

But putting values aside ... Iowa's former football facility was mundane at best, and dreary in certain spots. Recruits care. Current players care. Ferentz and Iowa Athletic Director Gary Barta pushed to change it.

'It was a huge jump,” said Iowa senior center Austin Blythe. 'That (old) building was a nice building, but it was outdated. This building is leaps and bounds better than the one we left.”

'We look forward to coming here,” Hawkeye junior cornerback Greg Mabin said, 'rather than the past. ‘Oh, it's just another day.'

'We want to come here, we want to work out in the new weight room. We want to be in the locker room with the other guys. It's a sense of wanting to be here.”

When Ferentz acknowledges his kingdom is housed in a castle, you know it's had an effect.

'It's uplifting,” he said. 'I think it's symbolic also.”

The shine from every neat, new thing wears off eventually. Once other programs build billion-dollar football laboratories that can teletransport players from wherever they are to the football building and back, Iowa will long for something better.

For now, though, the complex is getting five stars on college football's versions of Yelp and TripAdvisor. The Hawkeyes are 5-0. You are where you live.