The traffic on Central Street is crawling along at a snail’s pace. Packs of purple zigzag across the street, darting between stopped cars. Lines of smoke lift upward from the grills in the jam-packed parking lot. The faint echoes of the marching band resonate through the streets, announcing the arrival of the home team. Campus has succumbed to a crisp chill, too cold for short sleeves but not cold enough for a winter jacket. It’s fall in Chicago, and it’s game day in Evanston.
This is Northwestern’s version of Big Ten football. Around the conference each school has its own traditions. From the tailgates at Indiana to the whiteouts at Penn State; from the Big Bass Drum at Purdue to the dotted I at Ohio State. But there is one thing that all Big Ten schools have in common – a reverence for their stadiums. The tradition and atmosphere surrounding these venues distinguish them from those of other conferences. But it’s their size that truly sets them apart. Penn State’s Beaver Stadium, Michigan’s Michigan Stadium and Ohio State’s Ohio Stadium are the nation’s three largest venues.
“Growing up I always wanted to play at those places,” senior safety Brendan Smith said. “Unfortunately we didn’t always come out with wins, but I can go tell my grandchildren down the road that I played there and I experienced that stuff. I think that’s what makes the Big Ten unique.”
Younger players are in awe as they enter these mammoth gridiron staples, the sites of countless instant classics.
“Coming into the Big Ten, all the stadiums you get to play in, as far as history goes, as far as how loud stadiums get, that’s (what’s) exciting to me,” freshman running back Arby Fields said.
And as history shows, massive stadiums go hand-in-hand with the best teams in the country. Of the 10 winningest Division I football programs, three are members of the Big Ten. These three programs also boast the biggest stadiums – Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State. The correlation is no coincidence – in the Big Ten, wins and stadiums are as natural a combination as Steve Schnur and D’Wayne Bates.
FINDING A HOME
Every Wildcat player in the past 83 years has graced the grass at Ryan Field, from Otto Graham to Pat Fitzgerald. The stadium has hosted all four of NU’s Big Ten championship teams. The story of Ryan Field – the fourth football venue in the history of the school – is intertwined with that of NU.
Dating back to 1882, the first NU teams played their games at Deering Meadow. Then in 1891, the university built Sheppard Field on the site of what is now the fraternity quad. The Cats soon grew out of this field, however, and in 1905 they relocated to Northwestern Field, 75 feet west of the current stadium. Two decades later NU was on the move once again, this time to the 45,000-seat Dyche Stadium, which was named for NU graduate and former Evanston mayor William Dyche. The university made several changes to the stadium over the years, none larger than in 1997 when the stadium underwent a $30 million renovation. This upgrade included new seating, the replacement of artificial turf with natural grass and the addition of sports medicine and equipment rooms. The stadium was also renamed Ryan Field in honor of Patrick Ryan, an NU graduate and former Chairman of the Board of Trustees.
BANK A BEAUTY
If stadiums seem correlated with success, then Minnesota has found the first half of the equation. But it knows the second part is more important.
“You’ve got to win,” said Minnesota linebacker Lee Campbell. “All that matters in the Big Ten is winning.”
It has become common for professional teams to scrap their old stadiums in favor of state-of-the-art venues, but new gridirons are a rarity in college. Since 1998, half of the 32 NFL teams have built new homes. In that same period, only two of the 120 FBS universities have built on-campus stadiums.
Tomorrow the Cats welcome one of those teams to Evanston: the Minnesota Golden Gophers. The teams will do battle for the 85th time on Saturday, while 400 miles northwest in Minneapolis, the brand new TCF Bank Stadium awaits its first Big Ten action. Much to the delight of Minnesota fans, the Gophers’ new stadium stands in stark contrast to their old one. Since 1982, the Gophers have played at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis. Closed and cavernous, the Metrodome is also home to the Minnesota Twins and Minnesota Vikings. Because the Metrodome’s location severely curtailed student attendance, Minnesota made it a priority to build TCF Bank Stadium on campus. The university designed TCF Bank in a horseshoe shape, giving the stadium a more traditional collegiate feel and channeling Minnesota’s last on-campus stadium, Memorial Stadium.
Minnesota is the first Big Ten school to construct new digs since Indiana in 1960 and took advantage of the opportunity to furnish the stadium with an array of modern technology. At 48 feet high by 108 feet wide, TCF Bank Stadium’s scoreboard is the third-largest in college football. The storm water drainage system, made of 90 percent recycled steel, filters rain water and sends it into the Mississippi River. In September the stadium was LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified – a designation recognizing its contributions to a more sustainable environment. It is the only collegiate or professional football stadium to earn that distinction.
While Minnesotans watch their team play in an open-air stadium for the first time in 28 years, recruits watch the Gophers play in the comforts of an exclusive recruiting room.
“It’s a very exciting time in the state of Minnesota,” coach Tim Brewster said at Big Ten Media Day in July. “We’re awful excited about opening TCF Bank Stadium. It’s an amazing stadium, and it’s going to give us something that we haven’t had in a long time, and that’s a tremendous home field advantage.”
THE OLD STADIUM ON CENTRAL
For coach Pat Fitzgerald, stadiums are just one unique aspect of Big Ten football.
“Not only the stadium and the venue,” he said. “But also the fans that we all have is what makes Big Ten football so special.”
With a capacity of 50,805, TCF Bank Stadium joins Ryan Field to earn distinction as the two smallest stadiums in the Big Ten. The stadium on Central St. seats 49,256, but many of those seats are filled by opposing fans, especially for Big Ten matchups. Large attendance by opposing fans has long been a topic of discussion among NU football enthusiasts, and many have come to two general explanations: NU has a considerably smaller undergraduate population than other Big Ten schools – at 8,000, it is less than half the size of the next smallest school – and it is also located in a major metropolitan area home to hordes of alumni from other Big Ten institutions. Of Big Ten schools, only Penn State has fewer graduates in the greater Chicago area than NU.
Jay Sharman, a 1994 NU graduate and creator of the NU sports blog Lake the Posts, said he knows NU can do better. Sharman remembers attending games during the 1995, 1996 and 2000 seasons when the crowds at Ryan Field overwhelmingly comprised NU fans.
“I’ve seen it done,” he said, referring to packing the stadium with purple. “Nothing annoys me more than going to a Northwestern-Ohio State game and having it be 50-50 with Ohio State fans yelling, ‘O-H-I-O,’ and I can’t imagine as a player it feels all that great.”
According to senior defensive end Corey Wootton, this dynamic is something the players have learned to live with.
“We try not to really think about it,” he said. “You’re so focused on the task at hand. That’s kind of in the back of your mind. It does help when the crowd is a little more hyped for your side, but most of the time you don’t even really think about it.”
For Sharman, the attendance dilemma at NU is multi-faceted. It starts with the product on the field and extends into marketing.
“There are a lot of old-schoolers who look at stuff like billboards and television commercials as
kind of the Holy Grail, especially in the Chicago marketplace,” he said. “That’s pretty expensive. But you’ve got to find a way to get that game televised. You only get 12 chances, so you better make sure that fans can actually experience the product.”
Under Fitzgerald, NU’s on-field product has made significant strides. The Cats can only hope that this success on the field will spill into the stands and maybe result in a sparkling new stadium of their own.
