Years in the making, Maryland finally unveiled its new football facility, the Jones-Hill House, on June 4th.

Boy was it worth the wait.

The new facility boasts a 24,000 square foot state-of-the-art weight room, a fancy new locker room with all kinds of bells and whistles, a players lounge with custom pool table, music recording studio and barber shop, a state-of-the art sports medicine room three times the size of the one inside Gossett that features a Hydrotherapy pool and a 10,000 square foot dining area that features a Mongolian grill, custom Terps brick pizza oven and outdoor seating that overlooks the team’s new grass practice fields.

Current players were the first to get a look at their new home and based on their reactions, they are extremely excited to officially make the short move from their old home of Gossett Team House to the new Jones-Hill House permanently on June 14.

College football facilities have become an arms race in recent years and Maryland had some catching up to do with many of its peers. With a price tag just shy of 150 million dollars according to athletic director Damon Evans, Maryland’s Jones-Hill House is on par with, if not nicer than, the best facilities around the country.

One player who can attest to Maryland’s new facility stacking up against anyone’s is former five-star recruit and current Terps sophomore wide receiver Rakim Jarrett. The Landover, Md. native originally committed to LSU before flipping to the Terps on National Signing Day in 2019. The Tigers moved into a new 28 million dollar locker room in the summer of 2019.

“So far, I think it’s been second to none,” Jarrett said of the Terps’ facility. “Everything that this place has, every other place has. Given that it’s at home, I think it makes it a little bit better than everyone else’s. So I think it’s second to none.”

Although current head football coach Michael Locksley has only been on the job since 2019, his time at Maryland dates back to the 90’s and he also served as the Terps’ offensive coordinator under Randy Edsall from 2012 through 2015 when the Cole Field House project was just beginning to get underway.

While much of the design and features had already been finalized when he returned in 2019, Locksley made sure to have some input in making sure everything was centered around the players and their wants and needs.

“Fortunately for me, I’ve been selling this project for 14 years,” said Locksley. “This isn’t my first rodeo. I was here when they started tearing the seats out of Cole and all of the different suggestions of what it would look like. I was fortunate that I was able to come in and add some things to it, but Josh [Kaplan] his staff, Damon [Evans] and their staff did a tremendous job of bringing it all to fruition and I was able to just make some small things that were very personal to me, which always starts with being player-centric. Making sure that the players have the necessary things.

“I told our players it’s a lot like when you are at your house and you raise kids, you want your house to be the house they all come to. So let's make sure we have the right things to keep our guys here at home and not out in the streets doing things that they don’t need to be doing. So we try to do everything we can to be player-centric with the development of this project and make sure your players have everything in place, right here inside Jones-Hill House to give them every chance to be successful in life.”

Among the bells and whistles are things like Perch video technology in the weight room, with cameras and iPads that include facial recognition that allow strength coaches to monitor each player’s movement as well as make personalized strength programs for each individual. Other personal touches include custom LED lighting in the locker room which can be controlled for each locker area by an app.

For Jarrett, it’s the little touches inside the locker room that make up his favorite feature of the new building.

“It’s in the locker room, when you place your phone down right beside your locker, it charges,” said Jarrett. “That’s a little hidden gimmick that nobody really cares about, but given how much you are on your phone, you can just drop it and charge it. So that’s it. It’s a lot, but that’s my favorite one.”

Locksley and his staff wasted little time showing off the shiny new facility to recruits on June 4, hosting current 2022 commits like quarterback AJ Swann, wide receiver Amari Clark and linebacker Nyair Graham, as well as some of the top players in the 2023 class, including Rivals100 DeMatha defensive tackle Jason Moore and four-star defensive tackle Will Norman out of Connecticut.

For Locksley, who has been selling the facility to recruits for several years now, he said the June 4 unveiling was like ‘Christmas in June.’

“To see this come to fruition, and the vision Maryland had, this is a statement that we are serious about football and I’m excited to be a part and lead the charge for it.”