The Stadiums Of The Big11Ten: Part 2

RYAN FIELD

You cant spell architecture without arch.

Name: Ryan Field
Location: Evanston, IL
School: Northwestern University
Year Opened: 1926, as Northwestern Stadium. Later Dyche Field, before becoming Ryan Field in 1997.
Home Record: 198-234-10 [HTP]
Capacity: 47,130
Largest Crowd: 55,752, versus Notre Dame in 1962. [HTP]
Big Game(s): Someone from NU should email us and fill us in. We're going to venture a guess and say any time they play host to Notre Dame is a big game.
Distinguishing Architectural Feature: Awesome looking concrete towers at each end of the grandstand. McGaw Memorial Hall, which houses the field house, wrestling, volleyball and basketball programs, is built behind the north end zone.
Current/Past Traditions: The students doing the “growl”, making clawing motions and a lot of noise. Probably pretty intimidating.
Riots: None we could find.
Other Uses: Hosted the Chicago Bears season opener in 1970. Parts of the movie The Express were filmed at Ryan Field.
Interesting Fact: Students rushed the field and chanted “we’re the worst!” after setting the record for longest losing streak (34 games, from 1979-1982). I guess every school needs something to hang their hat on.

Ryan field is a nice looking place. Unfortunately, they haven't had a team to play on it in years. Brett Basanez scared the sh*t out of us though.

[HTP] A lot of the information pulled for Northwestern came from Hail To Purple. That's about a solid as a site you will find.

CAMP RANDALL STADIUM

-Location: Madison, Wisconsin
-School: University of Wisconsin
-Year Opened: 1917
-Home Record:
-Capacity: 80,321
-Largest Crowd: 83,069 (Nov. 6, 2004 Wisconsin 38, Minnesota 14)
-Big Game(s): They play Minnesota for Paul Bunyan’s Axe, and Iowa for the Heartland Trophy. We think the Axe is cooler because one of us has a habit of dressing up like a lumberjack for Halloween.
-Distinguishing Architectural Feature: Originally a horseshoe, now has seats on old horseshoe end. Second deck on one side of the stadium.
-Current/Past Traditions: The Fifth Quarter, where the band plays a bunch of songs after the game. This came into play in 1969 after a 24-game losing streak, so we’re surprised that people stayed until after the game that many times in a row to listen to a college marching band. Also, “Jump Around” is played before the fourth quarter at every game. The booth didn’t play the song once in 2003 and it nearly caused a riot. Perhaps the students didn’t get their fill of cheese before the game and were angry.
-Riots: October 30, 1993, a.k.a. “The Camp Randall Crush.” 73 students injured, 6 critically, after a win over Michigan. Hopefully this doesn’t happen to us if we ever beat Michigan again.
-Other Uses: Drum Corp International world championships (numerous years), State football championships, concerts (noteable: The Stones and Pink Floyd).
-Interesting Fact: One of the first stadiums in the U.S. to convert to artificial turf, in 1968. No word on number of ACLs torn at Camp Randall in the last 40 years.

There’s a relative lack of information on Camp Randall, since Wisconsin is one of the bigger football programs in the conference. Wisconsin is always an interesting team, one year they can be awesome and destroy you (like in 2006), the next they can be embarrassingly bad (like last year). So if that holds true, we’re not exactly looking forward to seeing Penn State play at Camp Randall this year.

This is another trip we’d enjoy making, if it weren’t about 1,000 miles away. While it is a common fact that there is no better tailgating scene in the conference (or the country, for that matter) than in Happy Valley, we’re willing to bet the food is amazing at Camp Randall. And we like cheese.