OT: What's your favorite stadium besides the Big House?
We all know the Big House is the best college football stadium in the country. But what other school's stadium have you always liked or have wanted to attend a game at?
And just to avoid 50 of the same responses, the Rose Bowl for the Rose Bowl game doesn't count.
35,000 seats, usually full. Good football team with a great coach. Great Naval Academy and Annapolis atmosphere.
1986-1990.
Only other college stadiums I have been to besides the Big House are Kelly/Shorts (CMU Alum) and Ross-Ade. I attended my first road Michigan game at Purdue this year. Both were nice but it was so damn hot at Ross-Aide that it may have changed my opinion at the time. For NFL, Ford Field is really nice.
Kyle Field is absolutely gorgeous. Was able to see the view from a suite, although not during a game.
LSU night game
I also really like Washington's stadium. It's right next to a lake. Really pretty.
The University of Maryland stadium for a Michigan game. You can arrive by subway to avoid parking hassles, you have plenty of empty space to spread out, and the place is half Michigan fans.
I've been to many college football stadiums.
Favorite is the Rose Bowl. Been to three Rose Bowls when Michigan played and saw Michigan come from 9 down with two minutes to go to beat UCLA in a regular season game that involved the successful recovery of a perfectly executed onside kick. We had been doing some major tailgating before the game assuming that this being a college football game, our drinking would be on hiatus for 3-4 hours. One of my group leaves to use the bathroom and comes back with three beers!! I guess the Rose Bowl was the exception. Of course, me and my other buddy also had to buy rounds so now, with Michigan losing the whole time and us sitting in the UCLA section, matters devolved quickly. We were being harassed, insulted, etc. the whole game until those glorious last two minutes and boy, we gave it back to them and more. They just sulked back to their Southern California lifestyle and we celebrated our brains out. (what little was left of them)
Notre Dame is beautiful with the stadium styled after Michigan Stadium and you can see Touchdown Jesus and the Dome. Fans are really nice there. My favorite memory was this one game where the ND fans around us told us the whole game that they hoped it didn't come down to a FG attempt because their FG kicker sucked and of course, it did come down to a FG attempt and of course, he missed it and everyone around me is, see, we told you so.
Least favorite is MSU. I like the atmosphere in East Lansing outside of the stadium, have good Spartan friends that I tailgate and go to the game with and I've been to probably 15 games when we played, most of which we won. However, the stadium itself is a dump. Difficult to get around in, long lines for bathrooms, concessions and the fans inside the stadium are assholes.
Camp Randall is a fun place to go to a game. And Cal's stadium is nice.
Ohio Stadium is a nice venue but we all know how toxic the atmosphere is there. I attended the Harbaugh guaranteed victory game there!! Boy, that was fun!
I really like Oklahoma State's stadium. Tailgating was fun, got to see my Chips win. Fans are super friendly even after the game. The stadium isn't very big, but it's a cool little place.
Stadiums I've seen a game in, in order of :
1) Notre Dame - nice stadium and pretty campus.
2) South Carolina (Williams Brice) - stadium looks like a UFO from a distance. Really nice people.
3) Penn State (Beaver) - Nice campus and the hosts were friendly. Probably because Michigan sucked both times I was there.
4) Northwestern (Ryan Field) - Nice, pretty campus, small stadium.
5) WMU (Waldo) - Nice, kind of historic facility built into a hillside.
6) Ohio State (Ohio) - Always wanted to go there. Probably will not go back.
7) MSU (Spartan) - The stadium sucks. I have Jackson National Life Insurance and Fly Capital City Airport ads permantly burned into my brain after many visits here.
8) CMU (Kelly-Shorts) - No comment
9) Miami (Orange Bowl) - The OB was hot, humid, smelly and the seats were uncomfortable. Kind of like Bourbon Street in the daylight. I saw two Miami - FSU games here. The games were great and the fanbases hate each other.
10) Miami (Dolphins Stadium) - Sterile NFL stadium way away from the campus. But they had beer.
11) EMU (Rynearson) - Bad atmosphere, bad teams.
I've been in Sanford Stadium (Georgia) and Darryl Royal - Texas Memorial Stadium and would love to see a game in both. I've also been to SMU and Florida's Stadiums. Also Folsum Field in Boulder.
Ofcourse nothing will ever compare to the memories made on the golf course and in The Big House. But;
Got free tickets to South Bend when they played Boston College a few years back when I was a young teen. 2009 when Golden Tate caught 2 touchdowns. Got to walk around the campus during the morning and got into the stadium early to check it out. Might be headed back this year for the Michigan game so I can take in the full experience.
Really want to make it down to a West Virginia game. The atmosphere seems hype whenever I catch one of their games on TV.
Old guys response.
Drove in with my bike in hand. Spent the morning touring before meeting up with friends. Old guys part: Plenty of room. I did not have to stand to let other get by nor did I have to adjust to stand and sit during game.
Can we make the old (Detroit) Tiger Stadium count? I still miss that place. I always wanted to go up in the third deck. Never got the chance...
Ilinois actually is a surprisingly good place. My understanding is they have the largest seating capacity goalline to goaline of any stadium. Maybe that's just apocryphal, but it is a good place to watch a game in spite of the lame tradition the team has. Went there with the MMB and then again a couple of times a number of years later.
Just a fantastic place. The third "deck," to the extent that it was a deck, was nothin' special, but it was good for Lions' games. And of course the whole stadium was a kind of deficient place for a football game of any kind. It was a baseball park. Nevere meant for football. But I got to see Gayle Sayers and the Bart Starr Packers there.
If you wanted to be hyper-critical, the very best stadium in the history of Detroit sports was Olympia.
And happily, the best stadium in this state or the Big Ten Conference is Michigan, and second place is very distant.
I love Michigan Stadium, but Yankee Stadium is my sports Mecca. I've been to World Series games at the old one--and back in the 70's as a kid. My childhood dream was to play centerfield for the Yankees. In the 90's I lived a 1/2 mile from it, close enough to hear the crowd cheer. At that time, I ran on the track at the park where the new one now sits, so it's as if I have been on that field. I'm from the Bronx at a time when it known as Fort Apache the Bronx. When the very name of the place might've been a dirty word, when Joe Garagiola saw fit to freely shit all over it on national television because it wasn't L.A. But the great Bronx Zoo Yankees allowed us to take pride in the place, to hit back at the haters, to flip 'em all the bird. They're my team forever. This is home.
to go see a game at yankee stadium. NYPD treated us like literal royalty and walked us right into the stadium. i had planned on taking my road-travel roommate, our starting center, but when we told the other guys on the team what we were going to do, they all wanted to go. so NYPD orders up one of their buses and escorts us to the stadium, lights and sirens, yada yada. it was a very fun night, got to see doc gooden pitch, loved the old stadium for all the history it had. it reminded me alot of tiger stadium which was still active at the time ('96).
Awesome story! You could feel the history at the old Stadium. And when it's rocking there's no place like it. Opposing teams don't like us...
being in tiger stadium. yankee stadium had similar architecture, those small/thin/crowded walkways underneath the stands, all of that. but it did indeed have that air of history. glad i made the effort and it was fun to drag the rest of the team with me. how we got there is a whole 'nother story. you show up at a michigan game and we tailgate, we can swap NYC stories.
If you expand the scope outside of college football, most of the baseball stadiums would top the list. Unlike most sports, the stadium is as much a part of the game as the players. The Green Monster in Boston, the ivy fence at Wrigley, the facade at Yankee, the short porches at Camden Yards. Even the newer stadiums are built to be unique and part of the expereince: the swimming pool in Arizona, the ray tank in Tampa, splash downs in San Fran and Pittsburg.
I never liked the Tigers (Twins fan) but I always wanted to go to a game at old Tiger stadium simply because of the stadium. I was really disappointed they did not recreate the outfield decks when they designed the new stadium.
As amazing as walking into the big house is every time, there is nothing quite like walking into one of the old ballparks.
Here's how I would rank them:
1. Big House
2. Kinnick
3. Camp Randall
4. Memorial Stadium
5. Toilet Bowl
6. Beaver Stadium
7. Spartan Stadium
Though I am obviously biased, I do think the new concourse at Michigan stadium combined with the bowl layout makes it the best I've ever been to. Kinnick is an easy number 2--also very aesthetically pleasing and the stands go practically all the way up to the field (I honestly think Michigan should either raise the field or lower the stands to make the atmosphere more intense). Camp Randall and Memorial stadium I would put on similar grounds. Ohio Stadium is objectively okay but the stands in the upper decks are ridiculously steep. Beaver stadium and Spartan stadium are just ugly hunks of concrete and metal. If we're going entirely by intensity of the atmosphere Beaver tops the list. Louder than any other place I've been, and the endzone upper deck looks incredibly imposing from the field.