To the editor:

An indoor football practice facility for $26 million, equivalent to the annual salary of about 260 full professors? Anschutz Pavilion, renovated in 2011, has the Ray Evans practice field. It was good enough for President Obama, but not for our football team? We civilians enjoyed working out there until coach Mark Mangino restricted use to the football program. By the way, didn’t he have some success on the field, despite those atrocious facilities?

It’s “20 minutes from the stadium?” Not if you run, as most players can. It’s also closer to the dorms than is the stadium and has locker-room facilities. What about a bus? Isn’t that how our tennis and soccer teams get to distant Rock Chalk Park for practice?

If the new facility is built, as seems inevitable, let us hope/demand that it will not destroy or degrade more of Marvin Grove, as did the football office building and related parking lots. Marvin Grove is to be “protected from construction” by KU’s master plans dating back to 1928 and is the Core Landscape of the University of Kansas Historic District (2013). It must remain inviolate.