Classic Stadiums, Classic Memories

NYT ^ | 21 October 2005 | GARY ANDREW POOLE

[MikefromOhio]

NOW that the air has chilled into what they like to call football weather, millions of Midwesterners are following an 80-year tradition, flooding every Saturday into the big university stadiums where their ancestors saw Knute Rockne, Red Grange and Benny Friedman. With professional football just a bunch of ragtag company-sponsored teams in the 1920's, the university squads could barely keep up with their growing fan base. To satisfy the demand, colleges scrambled to erect stadiums that could hold tens of thousands of people, especially in the Midwest. Today's teams could be the original group's great-grandsons, but they are often playing on the same fields.

No matter what your sports allegiances, nothing says football like these grand Midwestern gridiron stages, the equivalent of Wrigley Field and Fenway Park for baseball aficionados. Architecturally, the stadiums express "a shared cultural sensibility," said Philip Bess, a professor of architecture at the University of Notre Dame: rather than standing apart, they were built to fit into the campus aesthetic. The result is sturdy bricks, Greek columns and perfect breeding grounds for nostalgia and tradition.

To see several in a manageable trip, and maybe take in a game, a good route begins and ends in Illinois, taking in a small cluster of heartland universities within easy driving distance of Chicago. This part of the country, where colleges may represent entire states and the names of athletic conferences start with the word "Big," is where football fanaticism became truly all-American.

On the day in 1924 when Memorial Stadium at the University of Illinois was dedicated, Red Grange ran for five touchdowns and threw for a sixth against Michigan. Football historians still consider the first 12 minutes of that game, in which Grange ran for 265 yards and 4 of the touchdowns, college football's greatest individual performance.

[MikefromOhio]

Interesting article about the colleges in and around Chicago and the University of Michigan.

Of course I wish they had written about the Horseshoe, which is another great stadium and Neyland Stadium down in Knoxville. Oh well.

[MikefromOhio]

College Football Ping.

Freepmail me to be added to this list.

[dakine]

Real nice pic when you open the article. A REAL football stadium...

[MikefromOhio]

having been to both, I am a bit biased to this one:



But Michigan Stadium and Notre Dame Stadium is like going to Yankee Stadium and Wrigley Field for a college football fan....experiences to be had....

[dakine]

That little ol' thing you posted? pfft... (nice venue for a game though)

[MikefromOhio]

LOL

[scott says]

Heres a more complete look at college stadiums--


http://www.collegecharlie.com/stadiums.html

[jocon307]

bump for later reading.

Someday I will go to a college football game. There must be nothing like it in the world!

[Northern Yankee]

When I was in high school we had an event called "Band Day" where selected high school bands throughout Wisconsin were invited to a Badger Game in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1974, when I was a junior, we went.

We saw the Badgers destroy Wyoming at Camp Randall. During half time the band directors coordinated some songs to play to the Wisconsin faithful. It went off ok, but like many things of this magnitude, a bit too large of an undertaking for all involved.

The most memorable part was coming out of the stadium after the game. The college students were a bit tanked, and reveled around our group of drummers trying to find our way down State Street. (The big party street of Madison.) We decided to start a cadence with the inebriated college students marching along side of us. It started to become something out of Animal House. After marching on for about ten minutes We turned the corner of State Street and found our director waiting for us in the middle of the street. Like Gary Cooper in High Noon, it was a showdown that sent the drunken scurrying for cover, and our tails whipped by a no nonsense band director.

It was truly the most memorable game I've been to in Madison.

[RayChuang88]

I think one of the things that you don't get in California--even down in the Los Angeles with strong USC and UCLA teams--is the type of atmosphere you get in Lincoln, NE, Austin, TX, College Station, TX, Madison, WI, Ann Arbor, MI, Columbus, OH, Knoxville, TN, Athens, GA, Tuscaloosa, AL, Auburn, AL, Baton Rouge, LA, Tallahassee, FL or Gainsville, FL, where college football is THE big draw on Saturdays (mostly).

By the way, I hope University of Texas coach Mack Brown realizes that Texas Tech ain't a pushover--it could end up being an overtime shootout given the type of ridiculous scoring Texas Tech has done lately....

[kstewskis]

Ah, yes.

But there's still nothing that compare to the Grand Daddy of them all....

(Go !)

[petitfour]

Great article. I went to a game or two at Bryant-Denny Stadium and Legion Field, and I sure wish I had been able to go to the Bama-Tennessee game yesterday. It would have been great to see Condi Rice do the coin toss. That must have been quite a thrill for her.