Beyond NIL: Creating competitive advantage through integrated athletics design

Campus and facility planners face mounting pressure to attract top student-athletes in an increasingly competitive recruitment landscape shaped by NIL policies. This presentation demonstrates how the University of Virginia responds by delivering a transformative athletics complex that repositions facilities as strategic recruitment assets. Presenters reveal how integrating 750 student-athletes across 27 varsity sports requires holistic design connecting dining, sports medicine, recovery, and team spaces into seamless performance ecosystems. They showcase spatial planning strategies that maximize efficiency and minimize circulation time between program areas. They illustrate how environmental branding and values-driven design reinforce institutional legacy while building culture, and they deliver actionable principles for inclusive facility planning that supports athletic performance, academic success, and personal growth — establishing new benchmarks for future-forward athletics programming.