B1G Championship Game to remain in Indy through 2021 season
Looks like the Ford Field dream is dead.
Detroit has hosted the MLB all star game, two world series', the superbowl, the final four, and a couple stanley cup finals successfully in recent years.
As reported recently, Detroit needs to demolish 40,000 houses and buildings that are now vacant. 40,000 standing edifices... the city is a mess. You reap what you sow, brother.
The downtown is really not that bad. The rest of the city is a shithole but you have 3 casinos (4 if you count the one in Windsor right across the river), numerous bars, hotels, and restaurants. Also crime is around normal for any other big city in the downtown area. It's the residential areas where most of the shootings take place.
What's your point? Indy has also successfully hosted the superbowl and the final four within the past 5 years (and they're hosting the FF again next year), as well as the B1G Tournament and previous B1G championship games, not to mention the Indianapolis 500 and Brickyard 400. To suggest that they're not able to host an event of this size is ridiculous. It's also much more centrally located than Detroit and a great deal safer and cheaper to find accommodations in. I know Indy isn't the most exciting city in the world but, outside of Chicago, it's probably the best location in the midwest to have it.
but I've been to Indianapolis numerous times and the best thing about going there, IMO, is leaving. Not that there's anything particularly bad about the city, but of all the big cities I've been to, it is about the least exciting place in the world. Just a generic-kind-of-place that just goes on and on and on, so vanilla and plain and blah. I grew up in Grand Rapids before GR became a fun place (for a mid-size city) and it reminds me a lot of old sleepy GR but much larger. Give me GR or Chicago or Detroit or Memphis or Atlanta or Seattle or any # of other big cities, even Milwaukee, or most any decent-sized college town, anyday.
Guessing by your MGoUsername, maybe you live there and have a better perspective. But my impression of Indy, in a word, is "boring".
I didn't say that that they couldn't hold it there. I said that we should rotate it between Deroit, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Indianapolis.
Lets try that artist rendering of it again, this time more to scale:
Aw, come to Omaha!
Does Omaha even have a football stadium?
Well that's going to F up the entire Blue Print....
Looks like Purdue and Indiana will continue to have a very big advantage in the Championship
Should be rotated between Detroit, Indy, Minneapolis. The BTCG hasn't sold out yet in Indiana. It would go like hotcakes if it was in Detroit and Michigan was in it.
I'd love to see the attendance at either of those venues if Purdue and Rutgers were to play.
Yes, even Indy.
It pretty much sold out last year. 66,002 vs 67,000 capacity.
I don't understand why it isn't just held at Solider Field. Its the headquarters of B1G. Tons of B1G fans. Everybody loves Chicago. What's to lose?
The B1G will want this to be a "showcase" game, meaning they want it indoors so that the weather doesn't play a factor. Yes, it's a stupid reason. And BTW Soldier Field's turf probably couldn't handle another December game without a complete resod.
Also Lucas Oil Stadium is only 2 hours from Columbus and 4 hours from Ann Arbor. I'd rather we just rotate it and throw a bone at each of the member schools by having it in Cincy for Ohio, Detroit for Michigan and MSU, Chicago for NW and Illinois, Indy for Indiana and Purdue, Minneapolis for Minnesota etc.
substitute Cleveland for Cinci to make it a little more centrally located for the sake of PSU, unless you were to add Pittsburgh to that rotation.
In the end, it doesn't matter so much the exact cities that the game is rotatated to as much as that they actually do move it around instead of keeping it in Indy forever. The B1G is now so spread out that it seems so much more wise NOT to keep it in Indy when fans throughout the conference deserve a chance to see the B1G Championship Game in their local region occasionally.
It would be awesome to have it at Soldier Field to give the game a real B1G feel out in the cold, but really, who's going to want to put up with that kind of weather? Chicago winters are some of the worst around.
That being said though, I'd love for the B1G to adopt the Pac-12 model. Top team gets the title game on their turf.
worse than a game played the previous week anywhere in the B1G footprint.
The last time they played at Ford Field they had a crowd of 30K see their game.
If I remember right, and I could be wrong and I don't want to look it up, but I think the A-10's contract with the Barclay's Center happens to run through 2021 as well. I believe in coincidences, but not that one.