--- I fully acknowledge I am nerding out here a bit, but I find this stuff interesting. Having grown up in Iowa City with Iowa fans and seeing the ELITE tailgating scene by Kinnick, I am also desperate for Memorial Stadium/Champaign to reach its incredibly high potential as a "must visit" college football destination in the Big Ten and Midwest ... we have nobody in our way but ourselves! ---
While a sellout is nice for the statement it makes, what is really important is for players, recruits, media personalities, fans and viewers - whether they love, hate or don't really care about the Illini - to perceive Memorial Stadium as a place that
looks full and sounds loud for our games, specifically that home game against Penn State. Given the absurd number of seats we have underneath the east balcony overhang (see my P.S. rant below, lol) that are not really visible, the magic number for it to "look like a sellout" seems to be somewhere around 53k to 55k. The rest of the stadium was completely full, but compare the following crowds in the east balcony from our most recent 2022 season:
45,683 vs. Minnesota
View attachment 26273
56,092 vs. Michigan State
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Since all of the ~4k unsold tickets vs. MSU are underneath the overhang, it looks like a sellout. I forget the exact numbers of how the seats are distributed, but anything over like 44k will likely mean the lower bowl is packed. Anything over like 50k likely means the stadium looks "pretty full," and I think anything over 54k will look like a sellout. We NEED to put on a show for Big Noon Kickoff vs. Penn State, and I hope the DIA is actively working on ways to make sure students are in Grange Grove for the pregame broadcast and that we have a tailgating setup that will impress on national TV! It is honestly a monumental test of Illinois as a "football school." We cannot control if we win or lose that game (though a win would also be HUGE), but we CAN control how the college football world perceives Illinois football in the Bielema Era. Think of how quickly the reputation of the RAC changed because Rutgers basketball had an insane atmosphere there for a game a couple years ago and knocked off some good teams. Your average college football fan views Memorial Stadium as a morgue because it has been ... we can INSTANTLY change that perception if millions are tuning in to see a packed, orange clad stadium on a beautiful September day.
P.S. Regarding the seats underneath the overhang, this was a monumental failure to not do something with this during the RG renovation. Absolutely no new stadiums have seats underneath like that; they do what the following stadiums do and wall it off, ala Iowa State's stadium that is smaller than ours but looks more complete:
If we got rid of the 5k+ seats underneath the overhang and had a brick wall that would match the west balcony brick wall, it would not only return our stadium to the symmetrical look that originally made it beautiful (it currently looks so unbalanced!), it would allow us to fix the damn Horseshoe and the hideously huge space between the end zone and the stands WITHOUT INCREASING CAPACITY! I sincerely hope the in the eventual renovation that we do the following ... keep it super simple, relatively inexpensive and hit a homerun:
1. Remove all seats underneath the east balcony and make the lower bowl match the lower bowl on the east side.
2. Reconfigure the North End Zone (current student section) into a family-friendly area for large groups with beer gardens, vendors, tables and umbrellas in one part, etc. Think what Indiana has in the one end zone. That area isn't ugly or anything and it actually helps enclose the stadium, it just shouldn't be where the STUDENTS are!
3. Take all capacity from underneath the east balcony and redistribute it to the Horseshoe. Build a structure similar to what they have at Iowa in their end zones that LOOKS bigger/more imposing but actually REDUCES our overall capacity. Make it nice and move donors who are currently in the East Main seats to this more luxurious spot (even if it's in an end zone).
4. Move the students to East Main.
However, I had a few more thoughts on Memorial Stadium. First off, we really should just have some temporary bleachers for big games (like Penn State!!) that bring the Horseshoe seats down closer to the end zone. This is an absolutely comical distance from the end zone and it's an eyesore that doesn't match the rest of the stadium, I'm sorry:
