Inside the building, MSU’s storied past is documented with odes to Charles “Bubba” Smith, Clarence “Biggie” Munn and Brad Van Pelt, among other Spartans legends.

Helmets of NFL teams line the southern end of the addition, listing each MSU alumnus who strapped on a helmet for a squad in the pros. Photos and taglines make up the far entrance wall, highlighting MSU’s greatest players, teams and games. Another wall pays tribute to the 76 first-team All-Americans who donned the Green and White.

The project is an addition to the Duffy Daughtery Football Building, the former football operations center named after MSU’s head coach from 1954 to 1972, on the corner of Shaw Lane and Red Cedar Road.

The design and construction of the building was about six years in the making for Bob Skandalaris, whose surname is marked throughout the building.

Skandalaris first discussed a center for advancing football operations while honoring the past with Greg Ianni, senior associate athletics director for facilities and sports management. Once donations were open for acceptance, Skandalaris offered $5 million — the largest single donation for the project.

“I think it’s important to show your successes, whether it’s your children or MSU football,” said Skandalaris, a Bloomfield Hills-based entrepreneur who has founded several companies. “It’s even better that it’s tied to Duffy Daughtery’s name. He was such an integral part of our past.”

While the ultimate success of the Skandalaris building might make future recruits swoon like 12-year-old girls at a Jonas Brothers concert, Perles said the building is an extension of Daughtery’s legacy.

Perles and his wife, Sally, donated $500,000 for the plaza outside the building in part because of Daughtery’s impact on the program.

“I wanted to be associated with Duffy Daughtery, my coach,” said Perles, a former player and assistant coach for Daughtery. “He was a great speaker at banquets, he was a great coach and he was very loyal to his ex-players, helping them with jobs and positions. Duffy was a good man, like a father to me.”

The Skandalaris building’s completion is the most recent structural addition to MSU’s athletic facilities. Work on Old College Field, which will house renovated baseball, softball and soccer fields, is being finished and administrators said they are looking forward to their next project.

MSU Athletics Director Mark Hollis said work could be done at Munn Ice Arena when Old College Field’s update is completed.

“It’s always an evolution process,” Hollis said of the facilities upgrades. “It’s no different than being a student and learning. You’re continuously looking for something better and something different.”

After working in trailers during the construction process, MSU coaches and players have moved in to the new building. MSU head football coach Mark Dantonio, whose corner office displays family pictures, a mammoth TV and a large snapshot from a Michigan-MSU football game, said he started work in his home-away-from-home on July 24.

Dantonio said recruits will be awed by the space, as shown by the 15 recruits who have verbally committed to MSU in the class of 2009.

“The other thing this building does is exactly what we had talked about — it connects the past to the present,” Dantonio said. “It speaks to the past of our history, to see all the great players that played here.”