Gies Memorial Stadium

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#126      
2X2L
It's Memorial Stadium for the doughboys, not Gieses; Assembly Hall, not State Farm Center; Sears, not Willis; Marshall Field's, not Macy's; and so on.

What is good for the gies is not necessarily good for this gander.

Glad I got this off my chest. Honk if you agree. Please, no goosing.

Oh, Dyche Stadium, not Ryan Field.

Here are ideas: McDonald's Golden Arches Chariot Drive-thru Roman Coliseum, Domino's Eiffel Tower, Walmart Taj Mahal, Progressive Insurance Lincoln Memorial ...

Name your price. Nothing is sacred any more.

Having said all this I now say:

Go Illinois today! Beat Duke. The Fighting Pritzkers!
 
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#127      
Marshall_Lucky
Duke game was my first of the year, at my usual haunt in the west balcony. Unpopular take maybe, but I don't really like the new board. It distracts from the actual field and feels like it is now the product instead of the game itself
 
#129      
Mr. Tibbs
it will say “ The home of the fighting illini “

i’ll pick a nit - there should be more spacing between the words. esp in the name Gies Memorial Stadium
 
#130      
BalloonsTheElephant
Not specifically related to the Memorial Stadium experience, but watching a 3.5hr long football game with 45-60min of media timeouts really kills the energy in a stadium. Especially when you get the touchdown followed by a quick 3 and put or turnover. The new scoreboard adds a lot of excitement and visual stimulus to the GameDay experience, but football as a whole is getting tougher to sit through. MLB is now about 2.5 hours with shorter breaks, and college basketball is about a 2hr experience.

I may get hate for this, but this is my hot take for the season. Shorten the overall length of the contest. You sit 210 minutes to watch 10-15 of action.
 
#131      
Marshall_Lucky
BalloonsTheElephant said:
Not specifically related to the Memorial Stadium experience, but watching a 3.5hr long football game with 45-60min of media timeouts really kills the energy in a stadium. Especially when you get the touchdown followed by a quick 3 and put or turnover. The new scoreboard adds a lot of excitement and visual stimulus to the GameDay experience, but football as a whole is getting tougher to sit through. MLB is now about 2.5 hours with shorter breaks, and college basketball is about a 2hr experience.

I may get hate for this, but this is my hot take for the season. Shorten the overall length of the contest. You sit 210 minutes to watch 10-15 of action.
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The stoppages are getting nuts. Between the long timeouts after scores, possession changes, reviews, timeouts, injuries, challenges etc there is no flow to the game at all.

Makes it hard to get into the game, especially when the weather is unfriendly (you really notice it during the dead time).

I complained a few posts above but the board almost made it seem worse to me. The crowd is all watching TV instead of field action
 
#132      
IlliniCaboose
BalloonsTheElephant said:
Not specifically related to the Memorial Stadium experience, but watching a 3.5hr long football game with 45-60min of media timeouts really kills the energy in a stadium. Especially when you get the touchdown followed by a quick 3 and put or turnover. The new scoreboard adds a lot of excitement and visual stimulus to the GameDay experience, but football as a whole is getting tougher to sit through. MLB is now about 2.5 hours with shorter breaks, and college basketball is about a 2hr experience.

I may get hate for this, but this is my hot take for the season. Shorten the overall length of the contest. You sit 210 minutes to watch 10-15 of action.
Click to expand...
It's more time, but less football. I can't remember when this happened, maybe 5-10 years ago, the clock no longer stops when the ball carrier runs out of bounds except maybe the last 2 minutes of each half. So more time runs off the clock faster, but more media timeouts make the games take 30-45 minutes longer.
 
#133      
cfp32
BalloonsTheElephant said:
Not specifically related to the Memorial Stadium experience, but watching a 3.5hr long football game with 45-60min of media timeouts really kills the energy in a stadium. Especially when you get the touchdown followed by a quick 3 and put or turnover. The new scoreboard adds a lot of excitement and visual stimulus to the GameDay experience, but football as a whole is getting tougher to sit through. MLB is now about 2.5 hours with shorter breaks, and college basketball is about a 2hr experience.

I may get hate for this, but this is my hot take for the season. Shorten the overall length of the contest. You sit 210 minutes to watch 10-15 of action.
Click to expand...
You can thank money and corporate greed for this! Just like someone posted on twitter a few weeks ago " College football feels dead inside because it veered of the Widespread Panic/Allman Brothers cultural spectrum. It went from being big-hearted and brash to being completely Morgan Wallen-ified. It needs less WWE and a little more Billy Strings in its soul to find itself again".
 
#134      
Chief96
I agree with the issue with constant stoppages. Another question I have is what happened to the ILL-INI chant. I know there is the little one after first downs, but back in the 90's they'd have cheerleaders on each side of the stadium with ILL or INI signs and have the two sides responding back and forth. The place would be rocking. I understand why the took out the Chief and absolutely ruined our halftime show for the fans, but can't understand why this is gone as well?
 
#135      
CoachHooleyHoo
Not specifically related to the Memorial Stadium experience, but watching a 3.5hr long football game with 45-60min of media timeouts really kills the energy in a stadium. Especially when you get the touchdown followed by a quick 3 and put or turnover. The new scoreboard adds a lot of excitement and visual stimulus to the GameDay experience, but football as a whole is getting tougher to sit through. MLB is now about 2.5 hours with shorter breaks, and college basketball is about a 2hr experience.

I may get hate for this, but this is my hot take for the season. Shorten the overall length of the contest. You sit 210 minutes to watch 10-15 of action.
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Didn't seem like it affected the Texas/OSU game too bad. That place was popping the whole time. Maybe it's the state of the program that's the issue (past...terrible football with an occasional good year; current...good/not great.)
 
#136      
cfp32
Chief96 said:
I agree with the issue with constant stoppages. Another question I have is what happened to the ILL-INI chant. I know there is the little one after first downs, but back in the 90's they'd have cheerleaders on each side of the stadium with ILL or INI signs and have the two sides responding back and forth. The place would be rocking. I understand why the took out the Chief and absolutely ruined our halftime show for the fans, but can't understand why this is gone as well?
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If I recall the ILL - INI chant kind of went by the wayside when the students were moved to the NEZ. The chant used to go from the East sideline (ILL) (old student section) to the West sideline (INI). They have tried doing student section to the rest of the stadium or more North to South but it just doesn't work the same. I 100% agree that they need to bring it back. I had a post a year or so ago where they need to state a dedicated time/place for it. Start of 4th quarter, first defensive possession in the 4th quarter, something along those lines.
 
#137      
sultan of grange grove
Facts are that Josh really messed up this whole Gies situation. We totally undersold the value of the stadium and instead have allowed a man’s tax write off to dominate the way we run the athletic department. We gave up a chance to sell the stadium to a corporate partner who wouldn’t care where the money was spent
 
#138      
Red77sng
Will Ferrell Lol GIF
 
#139      
krushdad
Larry Gies has given a qtr. of a BILLION dollars to the University. There is a very good chance that the number will reach a BILLION by the time he has finished donating. People are so focused on the recent donation of 100 million. I can assure you he has done much much more in relation to NIL, player costs, and a whole lot more than people are aware of. I am not sure what Corporate sponsor would donate that type of money.
 
#140      
Pikeillinifan
sultan of grange grove said:
Facts are that Josh really messed up this whole Gies situation. We totally undersold the value of the stadium and instead have allowed a man’s tax write off to dominate the way we run the athletic department. We gave up a chance to sell the stadium to a corporate partner who wouldn’t care where the money was spent
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Possibly, but it's also possible that this is a much longer-term play with a top donor, and it's only one piece of many more potential donations to come that will far surpass anything a corporate sponsor would give us to put their name on the stadium. Josh is not dumb, and there is much, much, much more to this than a $100M donation to upgrade the stadium.
 
#141      
sultan of grange grove
Possibly, but it's also possible that this is a much longer-term play with a top donor, and it's only one piece of many more potential donations to come that will far surpass anything a corporate sponsor would give us to put their name on the stadium. Josh is not dumb, and there is much, much, much more to this than a $100M donation to upgrade the stadium.
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As great as Josh is… he has been at Illinois for over a decade and had very little team success. In fact I don’t think Illinois has won a team sport championship since he’s been here. And most programs (outside of hoops and football) are worse off since he took over. Maybe that’s NIL related. But… as I look around the sport… feels like we are very very behind in terms of asset management and allocation.
 
#142      
lstewart53x3
sultan of grange grove said:
Facts are that Josh really messed up this whole Gies situation. We totally undersold the value of the stadium and instead have allowed a man’s tax write off to dominate the way we run the athletic department. We gave up a chance to sell the stadium to a corporate partner who wouldn’t care where the money was spent
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Loose interpretation of the word facts.
 
#144      
fuddrules
sultan of grange grove said:
Facts are that Josh really messed up this whole Gies situation. We totally undersold the value of the stadium and instead have allowed a man’s tax write off to dominate the way we run the athletic department. We gave up a chance to sell the stadium to a corporate partner who wouldn’t care where the money was spent
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🤡
 
#145      
sultan of grange grove
People need to look at what other programs have gotten for naming rights and then formulate their opinions. We really undersold the asset we had

Facts are that we didn’t get top end value for the stadium naming rights. There were options… we didn’t explore them. Josh is pretty good at what he does. But mistakes happen.
 
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#146      
TampaToo
People need to look at what other programs have gotten for naming rights and then formulate their opinions. We really undersold the asset we had
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Troll much?
 
#147      
TheChief4Life
sultan of grange grove said:
People need to look at what other programs have gotten for naming rights and then formulate their opinions. We really undersold the asset we had

Facts are that we didn’t get top end value for the stadium naming rights. There were options… we didn’t explore them. Josh is pretty good at what he does. But mistakes happen.
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Cary Elwes Disney Plus GIF by Disney+
 
#148      
AirNeazy
To be fair, there is some truth to what Sultan is saying... we're really paying less than Rutgers, UCLA, Northwestern for our roster? What was the value add of a donation that is only to be used for a big videoscoreboard?
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#149      
fuddrules
sultan of grange grove said:
People need to look at what other programs have gotten for naming rights and then formulate their opinions. We really undersold the asset we had

Facts are that we didn’t get top end value for the stadium naming rights. There were options… we didn’t explore them. Josh is pretty good at what he does. But mistakes happen.
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Illinois had very limited options for naming rights because it's a true Memorial Stadium. They weren't putting CAT or any other for profit business on the name. That's a non-starter.

They're lucky Gies' father was a vet or that likely wasn't a go either.

I proposed changing the naming on Zuppke field. I don't believe there is any living Zuppke family still involved in Illinois football (I may be wrong). Does anyone today really know much about him? No. There would be a groundswell of opposition in the 100's. Maybe.

Gies has already given $150M to the Business school. So in total, that's $250M. I'm sure there are other donations in there. Presumably, he has more money to donate in the future. Keep him close to the program and don't let the University or posters "Shad Khan" him. Been there, done that.
 
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