Nile Kinnick Stadium - alternating color crowd
The odd thing to me is that the guys at Black Heart Gold pants apparently had real doubts about whether it could be pulled off at all, and whether it would look good if they did manage to pull it off. I even saw a few posts complaining that it would look like a giant bumblebee if it worked. "Bumblebee" is apparently not a desired image for the Hawkeyes.
Anyway, I thought it was interesting, and it seems to me that the same thing could be done at Michigan stadium. Alternating even and odd section numbers. The student sections could remain in Maize-out mode, and create their block M in the usual manner.
This was the pre-game imagining over at Black Heart Gold Pants. The actual version appeared pretty much like the pre-game rendition:
http://www.blackheartgoldpants.com/2010/8/18/1629679/fight-for-iowa-ima…
October 4th, 2010 at 1:37 PM ^
i thought it looked awesome on tv.
October 4th, 2010 at 1:40 PM ^
It was so badass I had to rewind the DVR and show it to the whole family. Which led to my dad saying "there's no way in hell you could pull that off in Michigan Stadium."
+100 cocktails to Iowa.
October 4th, 2010 at 1:41 PM ^
Maybe next year for Notre Dame? It's harder to get people to conform to color-outs in cold weather, because they likely don't have a bright maize winter jacket. However, in early September it will still be warm enough that people could wear t-shirts over sweatshirts and still be fine. Maize and Blue alternating sections, under the lights, would look pretty cool.
October 4th, 2010 at 1:41 PM ^
I thought it was lame.
Maize student section...that's cool.
October 4th, 2010 at 1:44 PM ^
Didn't really remind me of a bumblebee -- I thought it looked alot more like alternating sections of chocolate and peanut butter. Mmmmmmm, Reese's. (No, I'm not high).
Anyway ... I think it'd be cool if we could pull off a Maize-and-Blue version with 113,000 strong, but (1) I'm pretty sure we could never pull it off because of all the stubborn old people, and (2) at this point we'd just be stealing Iowa's idea, allowing them to hold that over our heads ad nauseum for the rest of all time.
October 4th, 2010 at 2:13 PM ^
This post brought to you by EA Sports NCAA 11
October 4th, 2010 at 3:12 PM ^
I agree, it looked more orange than yellow to me. My first thoughts were "is it Halloween already?"
October 4th, 2010 at 1:44 PM ^
maybe get everyone in the stands to rock a Dread wig.
October 4th, 2010 at 1:46 PM ^
I don't think it is possible we could ever pull that off. It is hard enough getting people to wear maize to maize out games, especially in the cold weather, I mean how many people own a maize winter jacket, not 113,500 thats for sure.
It is impossible to even get the whole crowd to do the spell Michigan chant as the visitor's 50 yard line section never says the "A" as it is supposed to.
October 4th, 2010 at 2:33 PM ^
makes me think that might be a matter of what direction you are facing in relation to the everyone else. In the student section it always sounds like the first 'I' is really weak.
October 4th, 2010 at 4:18 PM ^
When I sat in the student section, the "C" and "H" seemed nearly silent. This year, I got back for the UMass game and sat in section 40; I was surprised by how loud the "C" and "H" were. Not quite as loud as the "M" and first "I", of course, but way better than I remembered it being from sitting in section 25. And France, from across the stadium, the first "I" is just as loud as the "M". Apparently it matters a lot where you sit.
October 4th, 2010 at 2:52 PM ^
You don't have to have a maize jacket to show your colors; you're supposed to put a t-shirt on over your coat!
October 4th, 2010 at 10:06 PM ^
...a maize winter jacket.
Skis too!
October 4th, 2010 at 1:46 PM ^
as far as how it looked on TV.
We are somehow never quite there in the Big House as far as color coordination is concerned. For example - the white-outs in PennState stadium looks a lot more uniform than a maize-out in our stadium.
For Sept games, we all can do a Maize T-Shirt - not so hard really. Still - what you see in TV is a mess of Maize and Blue that kind of cancel each other. I am sure things look more imposing in person - but surely not on TV.
October 4th, 2010 at 1:47 PM ^
It did look really cool on tv. Boise State also pulls off things like this except they use orange, white, and blue. Boise makes the color down to a section and upper level and lower level usually have different colors. I don't know how many people Nile-Kinnick can hold but I know Boise is about 55K, the Big House is 113K and that makes it near impossible to coordinate anything.
October 4th, 2010 at 1:57 PM ^
Boise holds about 30k and Kinnick holds about 70k.
October 4th, 2010 at 1:48 PM ^
I know most people enjoyed it, but I thought it looked terrible. Not so much the idea is bad, but the colors kind of came off as very high schooly. It somehow made Kinnick look smaller. Not that I really understand why, it just wasn't very visually appealing.
October 4th, 2010 at 1:50 PM ^
I thought it was awesome.
October 4th, 2010 at 1:58 PM ^
that it could be pulled off at Kinnick. Citing a lot of the reasons noted above. But they did it.
The 2011 ND night game would be ideal, no doubt. In part because it is night, under the lights, and in part because the weather is likely to be t-shirt weather in any event. And apart from the Fighting Irish jackholes who wear green, they couldn't screw it up for us too much. It would be quite a scene.
We wouldn't be the first to do it. But we'd be the biggest.
The geometry of the sections in Michigan Stadium would look very cool in alternating colors.
The other thing that occurred to me is to get everyone who sits on the Maize benches on the East side to wear Maize with the rest of the Stadium doing a "Blue" day. Per my avatar.
October 4th, 2010 at 1:59 PM ^
I thought it was really cool looking. If Michigan could ever get some of the older fans to actually enjoy being at the game they might get into something like this.
October 4th, 2010 at 2:00 PM ^
The only way this could work is if sponsors came in and handed out t-shirts at each gate with a logo slapped on the back.
October 4th, 2010 at 2:05 PM ^
I thought it was cool as hell, and beyond impressive that they didn't have to hand out t-shirts to get it done. +1000 to Iowa, which is already one of my favorite Big Ten schools.
October 4th, 2010 at 2:55 PM ^
I didn't think there was any way you could get that many people to coordinate unless you forced them to by saying "here, wear this." But the camera zoomed in once and it was just a bunch of folk wearing their standard Iowa sweatshirts. Kudos to those hearty Iowans. I don't think we could ever pull it off here. Although I'm ready to try.
October 4th, 2010 at 2:06 PM ^
Iowa. I hate them with a passion only surpassed with my hatred of OSU and MSU.
October 4th, 2010 at 2:19 PM ^
October 4th, 2010 at 2:20 PM ^
Could someone with photoshop skillz do this to Michigan Stadium? I'd love to see what it would look like even though I don't think we could ever actually do it.
October 4th, 2010 at 2:36 PM ^
It was a novelty. I would rather have something more intimidating like a white out since the alternating colors did not set a "tone" for the night game.
October 4th, 2010 at 3:00 PM ^
there's no way around it - props to them, it looked awesome.
October 4th, 2010 at 9:27 PM ^
It really did look amazing. When I first tuned into the game, I did a double-take, I couldnt believe what I was seeing. I wish we could pull this off at the Big House. Maize and Blue in every other section under the lights would look great.