A tour of Northwestern’s NFL-meets-MLB-meets-MLS college football stadium

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

Two quick notes before we hop into everything:

I spent some time over the weekend pushing a big update to Who’s That Football Team? The newest version of the game has more than 1,000 new questions, several quality-of-life improvements and a more sophisticated AI for the traditional mode. I’ll keep working on big improvements to our other games, but if you haven’t played in a minute, why not give the game a spin today?

I know Friday was a huge news day in college sports, and rest assured, we’re making calls and doing the reading to come up with some unique angles on the latest developments in D.C., in sports law and labor organizing.

But today, I want to turn the time over to my pal, Luke DeCock. College sports fans might recognize Luke as a longtime reporter and columnist for the Raleigh News & Observer, chronicling all things Triangle Sports. Luke lives in Chicago these days, and he was able to swing by a major media event that I missed while I was driving around rural Nebraska.

I’ll turn the time over to him:

by Luke DeCock

EVANSTON — The first place Pat Ryan Jr. likes to take people is the very worst seat. It isn’t far, up a few flights of stairs and through what is still an active construction site with 1,100 workers buzzing around daily, two months before Penn State shows up on Oct. 2 for the first game at Northwestern’s new Ryan Field.

The back row of the stadium’s third deck is only 136 feet from the north end zone, 46 feet closer than the best seats were to the sideline at the old stadium. The seats at the front of the deck almost seem to hang over the field, the way the upper stands at old baseball stadiums hovered over first or third base — but, thanks to modern steel and concrete, without all the columns obstructing views below.

Ryan’s father was the chairman of Northwestern’s board of trustees, and his family primarily funded the stadium and is overseeing its development on Northwestern’s behalf. He likes to come to this spot first because it underlines everything that’s different about the Wildcats’ new home: There are no benches. Every seat has armrests and a cupholder. There are no nosebleeds. The stadium rises vertically, three decks cantilevered on top of one another like a layer cake, but with seats even closer to the action than at Chicago’s United Center, where the Bulls and Blackhawks play. Ryan Field is outdoors, but every seat is protected from the elements by a canopy that encircles the field.

It’s everything most college football stadiums are not, designed to create a desirable fan experience more attractive than staying home and watching on television, against any opponent, in any weather.

And there are no bad seats. 

“You have to create experiences that are better than TV,” Ryan said. That’s why he starts at the worst seat in the building before taking visitors through the rest of the stadium, where it’s surprisingly difficult to identify the best.

It’s also easy to identify who has taken Ryan’s tour.

“Go to the so-called upper deck and go to the back row,” Northwestern coach David Braun said. “I've sat in those seats. The view for the fan is incredible. What I'm most excited about is what this opportunity provides for us to reinvent how we do game day at Northwestern football and [how it] ultimately impacts the experience for our players.”

The new Ryan Field is an $875 million wager on the future, the most expensive college football stadium ever built by a half-billion dollar margin, a 35,000-seat outlier in a conference with some of the biggest stadiums in the world. Northwestern, too often a home-game road trip for the many thousands of Big Ten alumni in the Chicago area, decided to go an entirely different direction from Ohio Stadium and the Big House.

The old stadium was a smaller version of those, an old-school open bowl of aluminum benches with a small upper deck on one side, spreading horizontally as much as vertically. The new Ryan Field has the amenities of a new NFL or MLB stadium, a similar feel as the newest MLS stadiums and the overall vibes of something a mid-tier but affluent Premier League club might build — an aesthetic the overhanging canopy and student section in the south end zone help complete.

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The safe standing area for 2,000 students, the Wildcat Wall, rises at a vertiginous 33 degree angle from field level, with railings instead of seats, and sits on top of the visiting locker room. The concept was plucked directly from European soccer and designed to maximize the impact of Northwestern’s relatively smaller number of students. So was the opening date: Because Northwestern is on the quarter system, students don’t start fall classes until Sept. 22, meaning they’ll be back on campus by the time Penn State comes to town. It’s a chance to conjure the real home-field advantage the Wildcats have often lacked.

“When other teams are in that red zone, they’re going to be banging on the bleachers, they’re going to be screaming and they’re going to be yelling, and they’re right there,” Northwestern wide receiver Griffin Wilde said. “I mean, they’re going to be on top of that end zone, so it’s going to be extremely loud, and that’s just going to benefit us.”

There are private areas — three of them adjacent to the playing field alone, including a 500-person indoor/outdoor terrace that spans the length of the north end zone, mere feet from the dotted line that marks the edge of the safety zone — and there are club seats with tabletops and there are suites and there are comfy armchairs lining the front of the second deck with USB charging ports. But this isn’t purely a CRO.ticker fever dream designed to hoover every nickel out of the biggest donors, either.

It’s still designed for the regular fan — the mantra is “Premium for All” — with seats close to the action, grab-and-go concession stands and open concourses overlooking the field. Physically, the stadium is bigger than the one it replaced, yet it seats 12,000 fewer people. The playing field was even canted 25 degrees counterclockwise to sit on a northwest-southeast angle, creating 200,000 square feet of open space around it, what Northwestern likes to call “festival grounds” where people can congregate before and after games.

Renovating the old Ryan Field would have cost $300 million but delivered nothing new. A smaller, MLS-size stadium would have cost about $500 million but without the same degree of innovation. This was a completely different financial commitment, a massive wager on Northwestern football on several levels. As fancy and cutting-edge as everything is, there’s still an element of uncertainty when it comes to return on investment.

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“We decided to do this NFL-type stadium because we thought it’s a 100-year bet,” Ryan said. “So that was the bet the family made. And my job was to really lead the development team in, how do you make it different in ways that we think will make it top decile when we start and hopefully age in a way that people look at it? So I like to joke, mostly seriously, that we shrunk the building and used the money to give us an ability to do what we think makes it the best place to watch a game. …

“We made a bunch of bets that are, frankly, the opposite of what other stadiums have done. If we’re right, then maybe you’ll see echoes with other new buildings. But if we’re right, it’ll be great for us and Northwestern and the Chicago area. And if we’re wrong, well, this will be one-of-a-kind. We’ll never see another one like it.”

The new stadium has the potential to generate additional revenue through concerts and community events in a way that neither the old stadium nor Northwestern’s funky, temporary lakefront stadium could have. It has the potential to give Northwestern a unique playing environment. And in the best-case scenario for the Wildcats, it even has the potential to change who actually plays within it.

“A place like that, where you get to play your home games, something that cool and awesome, the words I’m saying aren’t doing the stadium justice,” Wilde said. “To have a stadium like that, it’s definitely a recruiting pitch. I mean, who wouldn’t want to play in that stadium, right?”