The University of Nebraska has a storied history when it comes to college football. What it didn't have was a centralized location for its current Big 10 football operations. Take SCN Top 50 systems integrator ECC—and a $165 million construction budget for the new Osborne Legacy Complex—and that is no longer the case. Based in Lincoln, NE, ECC has a longstanding 30-year relationship with its hometown college and was the easy choice for the latest addition to campus.
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The Osborne Legacy Complex dons the name of College Football Hall of Fame coach Tom Osborne, who was a big part of that storied history, leading Big Red to three national championships from 1994-97. Now, the 315,000-square-foot facility is home to Huskers football's entire football operations. This includes a wide array of football offices, meeting rooms, and walkthrough areas, as well as the Ndamukong Suh Strength and Conditioning Center, main student-athlete dining and academic center for all 22 sports, and the Hall of Champions curated experience.
“We will point back to the completion of this facility as a landmark event in everything that happens going forward,” Nebraska athletics director Troy Dannen posted on X to commemorate the official opening of the complex last September.
Less Complex Operations
The complex was a necessity to make things, well, less complex. Prior to the Osborne Legacy Complex, football operations were housed throughout the Huskers football venue, Memorial Stadium, and made simple tasks like coaches' meetings an ordeal that sometimes required walking from one of the interconnected complexes to another.
"The Osborne Legacy Complex was built to invest into one of the most comprehensive student-athlete experiences in the country and bring the Nebraska football program operations under one single, accessible facility," explained Mark Allen, account manager for ECC.
To make the Osborne Legacy Complex come to life, ECC installed a smorgasbord of Pro AV. However, per Allen, one of the earliest challenges was "meeting the stringent project schedule required to complete such a large-scale project and coordinating the system implementation with the various construction teams’ schedules that directly affected the implementation process."
Construction began in January 2021 and ECC received its project order for the AV systems in July 2022, with the installations process beginning later that fall. All systems were go for this past college football season.
Big AV for Big Red
There is AV aplenty throughout the complex, ranging from high-tech audio, visually stunning displays (like the wall-to-ceiling video wall in the primary locker room), and digital signage systems primarily showing off Husker football promotional content from both current day and historical programs and players.
The video walls were one of the more challenging pieces of the equation. There are a variety of Samsung displays throughout the complex, like the massive 85-inch 4K display in the football equipment rooms and the 98-inch commercial 4K display in the offense and defense staff conference rooms selected by engineering and technical services firm Salas O'Brien.
"The biggest driving piece behind the selection process for the complex’s video walls and displays was due to the product availability in alignment with the project’s timeline," Allen said. "As the project was extremely complex with multiple moving parts, the availability of products began to change based on the timeline at hand, which required strategically changing to some other manufacturers that still achieved the desired high-end quality."
As Allen explained, the audio systems were also a bit tricky as there is not one unified system throughout the complex. Like the displays and projectors, the audio systems were designed and selected by Salas O'Brien and include loudspeakers from Fulcrum Acoustics, subwoofers from JBL, a Holosonics audio spotlight system, and a variety of products from Shure, just to name a few. The systems encompass the entirety of the complex in the Hall of Champions, Ndamukong Suh Strength and Conditioning Center, Hawks Outdoor Practice Field, Athletic Medicine Area, Howard and Rhonda Hawks Gaming Theatre, Brook Berringer Players’ Lounge, Frank Solich Locker Room, Walkthrough Room, Team and Position Meeting Rooms, Bruce Grewcock Family Head Coach’s Office and Lounge Area, and Ricketts Family Football Team Auditorium.
"The bigger systems have interconnection through the QSC Q-SYS Core processors that they operate on—and as such can be interconnected—but these usually run as standalone systems in typical use cases," Allen explained. "The smaller audio systems run exclusively as standalone systems. If there’s a need to, audio can be pushed from the Memorial Stadium core audio system into the core Osborne Legacy Complex audio system utilizing networked QSC Q-SYS Core processors."
Each space has QSC touchscreen displays while Mersive's Solstice wireless sharing allows for content sharing via BYOD devices. Each touchpanel controls AV settings like volume as well as gear, such as Panasonic PTZ cameras.
A prime example of where all the technology comes together is the Brook Berringer Players’ Lounge. Here a Samsung 2x4 video wall and JBL loudspeakers are used by players for entertainment. A theater, located inside, employs a single-display video wall and Fulcrum Acoustic loudspeakers that are powered by a Dolby Atmos and DTS:X home theater processor and QSC power amplifiers.
Now, how about those projectors? Both Christie and Barco projectors were used in different spaces. The Walkthrough Room, for example, uses five 25,500-lumen Barco laser video projectors that are "blended together across a 99.6-inch-long Da-Lite video projection wall to create an interactive space for coaches and players to walk through game plans and simulate real game situations at a 1-to-1 scale," Allen said.
ECC turned to Crestron NVX AV-over-IP technology as the Pro AV control system infrastructure behind the complex's systems. Barco video wall processors power both the Experience Lobby video wall and the locker room’s ceiling video wall to deliver engaging 3D, high-performance content. Multiple Extron switchers were also being used behind the scenes to bring the AV experience altogether.
Sign(age) of the Times
With all these massive video walls and 3D displays, digital signage is found throughout the complex. As Allen explained, digital signage drives the overall experience at the Osborne Legacy Complex.
"Some of the digital signage for this content is tailored to the specific space," Allen explained. "For example, the Hall of Champions serves as the front door to Husker football using interactive displays to tell the story of Husker football."
Another shining example is in the Ndamukong Suh Strength and Conditioning Center, where digital signage details the weekly workout leaders to help the team push each other to excel. A built-in Nutrition Station includes digital signage to communicate the nutritional offerings available to the athletes.
"Outside of this area, there’s a blended projection wall marked the 'ONE PERCENT' that details historical performance and workout statistics to help drive top-tier performance," Allen added. "The Jackson Family Recovery Center features two 1x5 SkyVue outdoor-rated video wall systems that communicate detailed recovery information."
Behind the signage, a Four Winds Interactive CMS, which was already familiar to the in-house technical teams, is used for the more interactive and demanding content. For content that’s more informational, Allen explained, Triple Play serves as the CMS, while doubling as the IPTV system throughout the complex.
"The digital signage and AV systems are operated by an in-house, professional team for Husker football that solely manages and creates content for the facility, with additional management and content creation done by Husker Vision, which is the in-house technology team for all of Husker athletics," Allen said. "The technology is primarily utilized by coaches, student athletes, and in some cases by the student-athlete tutors."
ECC and Nebraska hope that they are both revolutionaries in what has been created on campus. But ECC is not done just yet: Several "add-on options" were proposed. And now that the dust has settled, ECC will help implement them to enhance the already strong core systems and make them more efficient.
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"ECC always designs and engineers our solutions with future-growth in mind, and the AV systems at the UNL Osborne Legacy Complex are no different," Allen concluded. "The Pro AV and audio systems are built on Crestron NVX and QSC Q-SYS control systems, which are inherently scalable and will both allow for easy scalability in expanding on these systems."
