Northwestern's new home field

#1      

1970 John

1970 John
1970 John
Saturday after Thanksgiving, Fighting Illini football will play a game on a soccer/lacrosse field. Northwestern University has announced that most NU homes games will be on the field used for those two sports.

NU says seating will be significantly increased for the next two seasons while the field is used for football. So one would hope. Current seating is 2,000. NU says seating will be 15,000-18,000, limited to season ticket holders and students. All others can be put on a wait list.

Announcement by NU

Soccer/lacrosse field satellite view

7C59AAAF-1DE7-4D8B-94BC-CB215409302E.jpeg
 
#2      

AyoDos11

AyoDos11
Southern Illinois
AyoDos11
1970 John said:
Saturday after Thanksgiving, Fighting Illini football will play a game on a soccer/lacrosse field. Northwestern University has announced that most NU homes games will be on the field used for those two sports.

NU says seating will be significantly increased for the next two seasons while the field is used for football. So one would hope. Current seating is 2,000. NU says seating will be 15,000-18,000, limited to season ticket holders and students. All others can be put on a wait list.

Announcement by NU

Soccer/lacrosse field satellite view

View attachment 33505
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Oh no...its Penn State's rec gym all over again
 
#4      

phats22

P
phats22
haha, this is crazy i played a club lacrosse game there years ago, its a tiny footprint
 
#5      

Illini2010-11

I
Sugar Grove
Illini2010-11
1970 John said:
Saturday after Thanksgiving, Fighting Illini football will play a game on a soccer/lacrosse field. Northwestern University has announced that most NU homes games will be on the field used for those two sports.

NU says seating will be significantly increased for the next two seasons while the field is used for football. So one would hope. Current seating is 2,000. NU says seating will be 15,000-18,000, limited to season ticket holders and students. All others can be put on a wait list.

Announcement by NU
Click to expand...
Will Ferrell Lol GIF


That statement makes it sound like they have up to 18,000 season ticket holders/students interested in attending.
 
#7      

The Ghost

T
The Ghost
Pretty sure the Illini and tOSU games will be at Wrigley...still trying to find a location for Wisky.
 
#9      

Konnie

K
Western Suburbs
Konnie
Here is some information from the FAQ about where some games will be held:

Which opponents will Northwestern host at the temporary facility? Those details are still being finalized but we will likely host all non-conference games plus at least one conference game at the temporary facility
 
#10      

ChiefGritty

ChiefGritty
Chicago, IL
ChiefGritty
JJE said:
I know they don’t draw a crowd to begin with, but I’m surprised the BIG would allow this even on a temporary basis.
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The Arizona Coyotes play in a 4,000 seat college arena. The Oakland A's are moving to an 11,000 seat Triple-A stadium.

The stadium Northwestern is building is smaller than Ryan Field. The new Warriors arena is smaller than the Oakland Coliseum.

The sports industry has decided it doesn't care about being a mass cultural event anymore, it exists to provide TV content and premium luxury in-person experiences to high rollers.

They'll reap the whirlwind.
 
#11      

Fighter of the Nightman

Fighter of the Nightman
Chicago, IL
Fighter of the Nightman
I thought I remembered the Illini game being moved to Wrigley (I am absolutely going if so), but I actually could only find stuff online about the OSU game being at Wrigley. Anyway, I don't care how you slice it ... that's a hilarious home field, even for one game.
 
#13      

Mr. Tibbs

Mr. Tibbs
southeast DuPage
Mr. Tibbs
ChiefGritty said:
This year's game is at Wrigley, right?
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not for sure they are playing us there
they are thinking about at least one game at SF
they are playing O$U at Wrigley for sure in early November - one would think threy would play two gamers there as a significant amount of work gets done there to convert to football from baseball
 
#14      

Mr. Tibbs

Mr. Tibbs
southeast DuPage
Mr. Tibbs
JJE said:
I know they don’t draw a crowd to begin with, but I’m surprised the BIG would allow this even on a temporary basis.
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as long as the field is proper, the B1G doesn't care about seating . it is not often a conference team builds a new stadium. its like been 100 years
 
#17      

1970 John

1970 John
1970 John
aiwpfan said:
Which is a great venue to see a game, btw. Gorgeous stadium.

The Northwestern thing is interesting. To put in more seats they are going to have to cut down some old-growth trees along the lake shore. It will be interesting to see how that goes over with some people.
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Yeah, I was wondering about the trees that I could see from photographs and the satellite view. It doesn’t look like there’s much room on the “land side” of the field either…especially to come up with 15,000 seats.
 
#20      

Fighter of the Nightman

Fighter of the Nightman
Chicago, IL
Fighter of the Nightman
I wonder if Northwestern doesn't really want to play Illinois at Wrigley. If they are playing de-facto road games in their "home" stadiums vs. Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio State, etc., they can rationalize it as crazy-passionate fan bases traveling well and dwarfing their small, elite club of alumni in pure size. If they play us at Wrigley in front of a partisan orange crowd, it probably stings more and does more damage to their marketing efforts in Chicagoland.

And it would indeed be quite orange. I went last time in 2010, and NU restricted tickets to only be available to Northwestern students and season ticket holders. Illinois was allotted its standard 3,000, so we theoretically should have had 7.5% of the crowd. Instead, it was closer to 50/50 or even 55/45 Illini fans. If Illinois fans were willing to literally buy NU season tickets for this one game or pay exuberant prices on StubHub, they'll definitely show up for a more standard ticket sale setup (which I imagine it would be this time).

P.S. One of the funniest visuals from the 2010 game is that all of the rooftop seats (which were not restricted in the same way) were completely full of Illini fans. It makes for a funny visual behind the Northwestern student section in the right field bleachers. :ROFLMAO:

wrigley1-jumbo.jpg
 
#22      

OrangeBlue98

OrangeBlue98
Des Moines, IA
OrangeBlue98
Fighter of the Nightman said:
I wonder if Northwestern doesn't really want to play Illinois at Wrigley. If they are playing de-facto road games in their "home" stadiums vs. Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio State, etc., they can rationalize it as crazy-passionate fan bases traveling well and dwarfing their small, elite club of alumni in pure size. If they play us at Wrigley in front of a partisan orange crowd, it probably stings more and does more damage to their marketing efforts in Chicagoland.

And it would indeed be quite orange. I went last time in 2010, and NU restricted tickets to only be available to Northwestern students and season ticket holders. Illinois was allotted its standard 3,000, so we theoretically should have had 7.5% of the crowd. Instead, it was closer to 50/50 or even 55/45 Illini fans. If Illinois fans were willing to literally buy NU season tickets for this one game or pay exuberant prices on StubHub, they'll definitely show up for a more standard ticket sale setup (which I imagine it would be this time).

P.S. One of the funniest visuals from the 2010 game is that all of the rooftop seats (which were not restricted in the same way) were completely full of Illini fans. It makes for a funny visual behind the Northwestern student section in the right field bleachers. :ROFLMAO:

wrigley1-jumbo.jpg
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Man, Knollwood's Big Ten team can't have this type of look, right? :D

I'm really surprised that the Big Ten hasn't stepped in to rectify this. Even trying to get 15,000 fans into that area isn't going to work unless you park far away and have buses shuttle people in. I'm all in favor of Northwestern rebuilding their stadium to the specifications they want. But the idea of what they are proposing is a terrible look for the conference.

The Bears played a season two hours away in Champaign. I get the issues with wanting students to attend games, but play in Bridgeview or DeKalb for a season.
 
#23      

Illinivek23

Illinivek23
Gurnee
Illinivek23
OrangeBlue98 said:
Man, Knollwood's Big Ten team can't have this type of look, right? :D

I'm really surprised that the Big Ten hasn't stepped in to rectify this. Even trying to get 15,000 fans into that area isn't going to work unless you park far away and have buses shuttle people in. I'm all in favor of Northwestern rebuilding their stadium to the specifications they want. But the idea of what they are proposing is a terrible look for the conference.

The Bears played a season two hours away in Champaign. I get the issues with wanting students to attend games, but play in Bridgeview or DeKalb for a season.
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Even Carthage College is not too far and similar setting on the lakefront. Kenosha would probably love to take their $$ too.
 
#24      

Mr. Tibbs

Mr. Tibbs
southeast DuPage
Mr. Tibbs
their first four homes games are non-con and Indiana. I get it that a 15,000 seat venue is maybe okay for that
then they play Wiscy on 10/19 and due to post season possibilities with Cubs, Wrigley is out

thats the game they are trying to move to Lambeau or Soldier

they have announced the O$U game on 11/16 as being moved to WF. Their game with us is on 11/30
due to all the infrastructure and sod work to convert the field for football, one would surely think they would play our game there too.
 
#25      

GatorMcKlusky

G
GatorMcKlusky
I've spent a lot of time at that field - my daughter player field hockey the Cats and the FH stadium is back-to-back with this field, like our soccer/track stadiums. This is a really bad idea. There is one small multi-deck parking facility next door. Parking and leaving after the game will be a nightmare. There's one small access road off Sheridan. And most of the spaces in that lot are already taken by faculty/staff/students. They're gonna have to shuttle the fans in from some auxiliary parking lot. Better idea would have been Maine South's field or North Central College in Naperville (when the Chicago Fire played there seating capacity was ~16K). Or maybe my alma mater, OPRFHS, where Bob Zuppke honed his craft before heading to Champaign!