Joe Rexrode

Gannett Michigan

EAST LANSING – For years, Michigan State University football coaches would make sure visiting recruits on Saturday afternoons would see everything but the home locker room.

Now it would be impossible to miss. And it would be possible to put an entire class of recruits inside it and let them roll around on the floor.

Monday was MSU's turn to show off a sparkling athletics facility, a $24.5 million, 50,000-square-foot renovation to the north end zone of Spartan Stadium anchored by a plush, spacious home locker room. The 15-month project was under way long before the Spartans won last season's Rose Bowl, though that on-field success likely served to encourage donors.

It may not put MSU out front of that portion of the never-ending college sports "arms race," but it eliminates the last glaring weak spot in MSU's facilities roster — a decades-old locker room that was "an embarrassment," MSU deputy athletic director Greg Ianni said.

"To me it's a check-off, in the recruiting battle especially," said Ianni, who is in charge of MSU's athletics facilities. "If it's not a factor, then we've succeeded. Because as soon as we build something great, it's like the Berkowitz Complex (basketball practice facility at Breslin Center). There's no question that was the best facility of its kind in the country (when it was built in 2001). But as soon as it was done, a year later, somebody built one better. So you just want to make sure it's good for what you need."

The project also includes new locker rooms for visitors and officials, a recruiting center and an improved entrance, concourse and restrooms for fans — and a media center, officially the Tom and Lupe Izzo Family Media Room. The MSU men's basketball coach donated $500,000 for that portion of the project, then joked aloud during Monday's dedication ceremony: "What do I get the media room for? I hate those people!"

He wasn't the only familiar name on the list of donors. Earvin "Magic" Johnson and his wife, Cookie, gave $3 million toward the project, MSU athletic director Mark Hollis said.

The John Demmer family gave $3.5 million, and the Demmer Family Pavilion now greets fans entering on the north side of the stadium, as does the Craig & Vicki Brown Plaza ($2 million gift).

Hollis gave $500,000, and MSU head coach Mark Dantonio is listed in the $100,000 to $249,999 range among donors to the project.

In all, more than $24 million was raised, MSU senior associate athletic director Chuck Sleeper said, with 30 of the 100 lockers still open for sponsorships — at $50,000 a pop.

The locker room itself is now called the Rachel Fairman Adams Spartan Locker Room, after the late mother of former MSU and NFL offensive lineman Flozell Adams. Adams gave a gift of $1.5 million for the locker room, and MSU trustee Brian Mosallam — a former MSU teammate of Adams — recounted at the dedication the conversation Adams had with Dantonio before deciding to give.

Dantonio told Adams he wasn't going to ask for his money and that Adams was already "a Spartan for life," Mosallam recalled.

"The first thing I thought," Mosallam said, "was, 'Coach just killed the sales pitch.'"

But Adams hopped aboard like many others, and now Dantonio's program has another selling point. Of course, as Dantonio pointed out in a dedication that included speeches from MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon, Hollis, Ianni, Sleeper and MSU football player Kurtis Drummond, the Spartans were faring pretty well in the old facility.

"Regardless of what it looked like," Dantonio said, "we had the right people in that locker room."

People who won 13 of 14 football games last season, including the Rose Bowl over Stanford, right in the thick of the fund-raising effort.

"No question," Ianni said, "it helps."

Joe Rexrode is a reporter for the Detroit Free Press