Within a few years, the midcentury red brick field house in the center of the University of Maryland campus will be a glassy, sunlit home of medical facilities and classrooms, as well as an athletic conditioning center, a locker room and three football fields — two outdoors and one inside.
The transformation of historic Cole Field House, the university’s former basketball arena, signifies a grander plan being carried out in College Park: Maryland is trying to emulate the University of Oregon, riding the largess of a multibillion-dollar apparel company to athletic prominence.
Athletic departments throughout the country watched with envy in recent years as Phil Knight, a founder of Nike and an Oregon alumnus, donated hundreds of millions of dollars to help propel the Ducks from relative obscurity to the upper echelon of college sports.