AUBURN | It’s not everything Bruce Pearl wants but Auburn’s all-time winningest coach understands that large-scale facility construction is going to be limited in the NIL and revenue-sharing era of college sports.

The Auburn University’s Board of Trustees is set to approve more limited enhancements to Neville Arena during Friday’s quarterly meeting Friday, three years after approving the building of a separate practice gym.

“When NIL came in at the same time that our new practice facility was approved … We were in the process of just finishing up football's facility. We knew baseball renovation was coming. We knew that the stadium had some things that were coming, and I just looked at it all at that time when NIL first came out and said, 'I just don't think we can do this right now. Or whether we should do this right now because were going to need to fund our student-athletes in all sports.’

“And I just didn't think it was fair the way NIL was set up where so much of it was going to be on our donors and advertisers and people that wanted to participate in NIL to then ask them at the same time for a brand new state of the art practice facility.”

The new plan, which is being called Neville Arena – Team Support Improvements, will include relocating the volleyball program to the athletics complex, freeing up 22,500 square feet to add enhancements to the existing practice gym, upgrade the scholarship lobby and enlarge the team meeting and office spaces within the men’s and women’s basketball suites.

The new project is budgeted at $9.0 million and financed by Athletics Department funds.

“First of all grateful to the board and to our athletic director, John Cohen, for wanting to continue to upgrade this phenomenal facility, I'm grateful,” said Pearl. “Would any basketball coach like to have a standalone, state-of-the-art basketball facility? Of course, I'd be disingenuous if I said that we wouldn't love to have that.”