South Carolina’s new football facility has a damn recording studio

Darius Rucker donated it!

In 2019, college football facilities are the sport’s equivalent of Keeping up with the Joneses. Schools spend millions to create state-of-the-art places for players and coaches.

One of the most recent ones built is at South Carolina, which unveiled its $50 million new facility in January. One of the more unique parts about it? It has a dang recording studio, donated by Gamecock alumnus and country music singer Darius Rucker.

Rucker attended USC in the 1980s. He and the other three members of the group met and formed Hootie And The Blowfish right there in Columbia.

But back to this recording studio, which is probably one of the more unique amenities in a football facility: It sounds like players are pretty pumped to use it.

“You know I’m going to be in that studio,” Javon Kinlaw said, via The Big Spur, last March. “Throw bars on the track, show I got a little flow. Whip my notepad out, you know I’ve been writing some stuff down. I got two (songs) in the book ready to get on the track. I’ve been messing around a lot, but I’ve been workin on it for a while. I just want to do something funny in there. When the time comes, I’m going to be ready for it.”

A recording studio is pretty unique, but South Carolina won’t have the only facility that has a place to lay down some tracks.

In fact, Georgia installed a damn DJ booth in its locker room in 2017:

Both of these are pretty sweet, but I’d have to give the advantage to South Carolina, since recording your own tracks is much cooler than DJing, imo. The Gamecocks’ facility also has a barber shop (increasingly common in facilities) and a movie theater, so it’s safe to say players will be spending a lot of their time here even outside usual football hours.