NU’s Braun bills new Ryan Field as ‘best stadium in all of football’
Sitting empty, with roughly 85% of the seats installed and construction noise coming from every direction, it's difficult to imagine the game-day atmosphere at Northwestern's new Ryan Field.
It's intimate, with a capacity of 35,000; has great sightlines and is designed to generate noise. Wildcats head coach David Braun will not wait for the Oct. 2 opener to make a bold declaration.
“We're going to be playing in the best stadium in all of football,” Braun said Tuesday during a tour for reporters. “I think all of us that are standing here right now would agree this is something like we've never seen in college football before.”
OK, Braun didn't say best in the Big Ten, didn't say best in college football. He went with the best stadium in all of football, NFL and CFL included. That's pending the outcome of the Bears' Wolf Lake Park in Hammond, obviously.
“This entire fan base will literally be on top of you,” Braun said. “I truly believe it's the best stadium in all of football. Ultimately, I think it's right-sized for our community.”
That all sounds great, but the ever-present challenge for the Wildcats is to fill the seats with their own fans to make this work. Wrigley Field was a cool venue to host games, but it was 90% Michigan fans last November for that game.
“I'm going to challenge our fan base,” Braun said. “I'm going to challenge our students. It's been built. Now it's our job to put one heck of a team in this space. It's our fans' job to show up, fill this place up with purple and truly make this the best home-field advantage in the country.”
One interesting feature of the new stadium is a steep, standing-only student section in the south end zone. Inspired by European soccer venues, it's similar to what the Los Angeles Clippers built in their own arena. Just be careful what you do the night before game day, students. There's nowhere to sit down during those marathon TV time outs.
Northwestern will play its first two games at the lakefront stadium, against South Dakota State and Colorado; before new Ryan Field debuts on Friday, Oct. 2 against Penn State.
The Cats will host four additional games in the new venue, against Ball State, Rutgers, Iowa and Illinois.
New Ryan Field is being billed as the most expensive college football stadium ever built, at a price tag of $870 million. Most stadiums in the Big Ten are 100 years old, so that bar is fairly low.
There's still plenty of work to be done on the building. It's tough to envision any of the premium spaces right now. But this place will be fun when it's full.
New NU offensive coordinator Chip Kelly used to be head coach at Oregon. So he might be the best judge of whether NRF (new Ryan Field) gets louder than Autzen Stadium in Eugene.
“The roof part helps,” Kelly said Tuesday. “Oregon's like that because of the cantilevered roof, keeps the sound in. They put some thought into (Northwestern's answer). That will be a challenge for our fans.”