Forget tourism dollars and marketing profiles and general public goodwill. The Kansas City Chiefs’ plan to relocate their summer training camp to Missouri Western brings benefits in those areas — and more — but that’s all been discussed, understood and accepted.

The Griffons open the football season in 11 days, and that makes it the perfect time to finally talk about what the Chiefs’ annual St. Joseph visit means for Western’s ability to burst through to the MIAA’s top echelon.

Coach Jerry Partridge says, simply, “it’s so huge.”

Partridge sums up Western’s inability to improve its athletics facilities the last decade candidly. He calls it a “failure.”

Pittsburg State, Northwest Missouri State and Washburn all raised and invested tens of millions of dollars into their stadiums, fields, weight rooms, locker rooms, meeting rooms, coaches offices ... And Western waited on the Chiefs.

“We’ve always been on hold,” Partridge says. “We kept going after the Chiefs and kept telling ourselves, 'Why go do this or that (improvement) if we’re going to get the Chiefs?’”

Undeterred by antiquated locker rooms, a stadium without visitor rest rooms (unless you count the often-used woods behind the bleachers), tiny staff offices and facilities generally rated among the lower half of the MIAA, Partridge found ways to win. The Griffons’ .623 winning percentage under Partridge came despite a near-embarrassment of their facilities.

“We wouldn’t take our recruits to the football offices and weight room until the end of the day,” Partridge says. “It would be eight hours until they saw the football staff because all that paled in comparison to Northwest or Pittsburg or Central.”

Western won with grit and toughness. It earned the school’s first-ever trip to the Division II playoffs three years ago.

“But we’ve never been able to get over the hump,” Partridge says.

The improvements include a new indoor practice building with 5,000 square feet of locker rooms — featuring wood lockers identical to the ones the Chiefs currently use at Arrowhead Stadium; top-notch training rooms with a hydro-therapy room that boasts hot-and-cold, walk-in whirlpools; a 5,000-square-foot weight room; a 133-seat theater-style lecture hall; and equipment and storage rooms triple the size of their current facilities.

The funding for all this comes mainly from the Chiefs and the state of Missouri: the state’s giving the Chiefs about $25 million in tax credits, and the Chiefs are handing off $10 million to Western to help cover the costs of the $14 million facility.

“Now when we recruit,” Partridge says, “we’re going to have something pretty shiny to show off to those kids.”

The Griffons, Partridge says, now will be able to recruit at a different level, targeting some athletes that might have been out of their reach before. The investment hands them the chance to stand with the MIAA’s best.

Over the last year, Western athletic director Dave Williams and President Dr. Robert Vartabedian deftly maximized all of the school’s opportunities.

Now the work sits in front of the football staff and team.

“We’re not done,” Partridge says. “We know that there are other things to improve. Whatever we don’t get done through the Chiefs, now we can focus on going out and getting them done.

“And we’re going to have to learn to recruit all over again. It’s a new game for us.”