Northwestern Football Is Getting A Brand Spankin' New Stadium
The Patrick G. ’59, ’09 H and Shirley W. Ryan ’61, ’19 H (’97, ’00 P) Family has made the largest single gift in Northwestern University’s history, a $480 million gift that will accelerate breakthroughs in biomedical, economics and business research and enable the University to redevelop Ryan Field and construct a best-in-class venue for the Northwestern community.
A lot of people know this but my fandom goes as follows: 1. White Sox 1a. Northwestern Football. Kinda weird, but it's just engrained into my blood at this point as someone who's gone to most of their home games since the year 2000ish. I know it's random and I know they're not some perennial power, but I love that they've become a really good program with a grade A head coach in Pat Fitzgerald. I love rooting for them as the former little engine that could that has won 2 division championships in the last 3 years.
But as the nerdy, small school that typically wins with "lesser" recruits than its peers, they've started to sort of say "F this, we're every bit as dedicated to our athletics as any of the state schools in the B1G" thanks to Fitz, former AD/Current ACC commissioner Dr. Jim Phillips, and especially from Pat and Shirley Ryan (who will, as a side note, probably be the majority owner of the Bears soon enough).
Their practice facility is second to none:
But Ryan Field itself? Yeah, it sucks. I never really cared that it sucks until 2018 when the Cats played ND and the lines to take a piss were 8 years long and it just couldn't support ~50,000 people. Well, now that's changing as they're going to be renovating what just might be the worst stadium in P5.
The language in the release is sort of ambiguous and uses both "renovate" and "construct" so no idea if it's going to be from scratch or not, but it doesn't matter. It's going to be new, it's going to be awesome, and it will make Northwestern that much of a bigger attraction to recruits. They've incrementally done better and better over the years on the recruiting trail, now they will have a brand new stadium to show off on top of their world class practice facilities.
Can't wait until they break ground. Guessing they'll have to play a year or two at Soldier Field once that happens and it will be WELL worth it the wait. I am super fucking pumped for this. Let's ride. Can't wait to see the new stadium concepts come out.
PS check out the videos we've done with NU in the last couple years:
