Smells like more commits to Oregon.

Byline: Rob Moseley The Register-Guard

For all the plasma TVs, video-game systems and plush couches in Oregon's refurbished football locker room, something else occurred to Willie Glasper when he toured the facility earlier this month.

"It didn't smell," said Glasper, a senior at De La Salle High School in Concord, Calif. "I remember reading that, so I was seeing if I could smell anything."

Not exactly fodder for one of Oregon's fancy billboards (`The UO locker room: It doesn't stink!'). But Glasper had read about the upgrade in Sports Illustrated after the Ducks beat Michigan, and recalled that the story mentioned a high-tech ventilation system in each cubicle.

So he conducted his own test. And did he catch a whiff of stench?

"Nope," Glasper said.

Starting next fall, Glasper will be around to see firsthand if the new locker room can maintain that through five years of football. On Tuesday, nearly two weeks after making his decision in private, Glasper announced publicly that he has made a verbal commitment to sign with Oregon two weeks from today, as first reported by Rivals.com.

Glasper, considered by some experts the top corner on the West Coast, will be joined in Eugene by at least two of his prep teammates. Safety Terrance Kelly also made his commitment to Oregon public Tuesday on Rivals.com, and cornerback Jackie Bates has been committed to the Ducks since December.

Oregon is also thought to be in the running for De La Salle receiver Cameron Colvin, one of the top prospects in the country.

"That should be real fun, kind of like high school," said Glasper, who along with Kelly is a four-star prospect according to Rivals.com. "I'm buddies with them, and we all hang out on weekends and stuff."

Now they'll have a chance to do the same in their home at the Casanova Center, the $3.2 million locker room. One factor in constructing the locker room was attracting recruits, and Glasper and company will be the first recruiting class to sign after the remodel.

Glasper, 5-feet-10 and 180 pounds, took an official visit to Arizona State and has also been in Southern California's locker room, and he said neither compares with Oregon's.

"Overall, it's just better," he said. "There's nothing like it, I know that for a fact."

Kelly, who played linebacker in high school but said Oregon recruited him as a safety, was also impressed with the locker room. But like the rest of the recruits who commented on the locker room, Kelly added a qualifier.

"It was nice," said Kelly, 5-11 and 210 pounds, "but I wasn't going to base my decision on that."

Defensive lineman Cole Linehan of Banks agreed, though he said he'll be happy to enjoy the new locker room in the fall.

"You can get the job done as long as they have OK facilities," said Linehan, who committed to Oregon earlier this month. "But it doesn't hurt. You definitely enjoy it when you have it."

Perhaps surprisingly, Linehan said Oregon isn't stressing the locker room over its other facilities during official visits. But the Ducks featured it on game days in the fall, allowing recruits to tour the locker room after games at Autzen Stadium.

And with all the publicity Oregon's facilities have received recently, from newspaper reports to a segment on ESPN's "Outside the Lines" to the Sports Illustrated article, word is out about the locker room among recruits.

"Everybody knows about it, and everybody talks about it," Linehan said.

Linehan himself had heard stories about the locker room, how it featured more space for gear, with Internet connections available from each bank of lockers.

"I knew it was going to be cool, because people had talked about it," he said. "But once I walked in and saw it, I hadn't seen anything like it."

Aaron Klovas, an offensive lineman who like Linehan is a SuperPrep all-American, first visited Eugene when the locker room was under construction. He later committed to the Ducks in January.

Klovas has said Oregon's facilities were so clearly better than those of other schools he visited, he decided to eliminate them from his decision-making process.

"When I first went down to Oregon, the locker room wasn't done, and I loved the place," Klovas said. "When it was done, that was just an add-on.

"But really, my decision wasn't based on anything like that. You have all the whistles and bells like the weight room, the big, nice stadium and the locker room. But really those aren't important to the decision. The important parts are academics, and athletically if it was the right fit for me."

Linehan also visited Oregon State and Washington, and said neither school's locker room compared favorably with the Ducks' new home.

"I bet you there's no locker room like it in the NFL," Linehan said. "There's a big gap. Washington's locker room is pretty cool. It's pretty big, but it doesn't have all those bells and whistles Oregon does.

"There's no comparison."