I think I’ll miss the old Ryan Field.
I think. Maybe. Probably.
I’m not actually confident because it was a bit of – and I mean this with the utmost respect of Northwestern and their alumni – a bit of a dump. They knew that. They will be the first to tell you that.
But it kind of was awesome?
I recognize that most of the audience that reads this blog never went to the old Ryan Field. This is after all a blog about Penn State football who has played at Northwestern just three since 2016. But in part entranced by the greatness of the city of Chicago and in part driven by our at times too fanatical fandom, Anna and I attended each of those. Still, my emotional ties to the place are limited.
Yet each time we went, I felt more entranced by the bizarre, borderline dilapidated state of the football stadium a few blocks away from Lake Michigan.
The half that you saw from the main broadcast angle was glorified bleachers. They were more substantial than most high school stadiums but not every high school stadium.
A few years after our first and second visits to Ryan Field, Anna and I visited my cousin Jimmy and his family in Texas. They live in a one-stoplight-type town a solid hour north of Dallas and then some.
Gunter is the sort of place that Friday Night Lights – the show – was based on. Yes that can be said about just about any town in Texas but Gunter is inescapably just that. The caricatures of Texas high school football are true. The town shuts down. Everyone shows up and on their way to the stadium they pass bales of hay with the Tigers’ logo on them. When it’s football season, they’re thinking about football season. When it’s not football season, they are thinking about football season. Every single thought you have about small Texas high school football is absolutely what you envision when you see Gunter.
The football “stadium” is the type of stadium you can see from either end because there are no seats in the end zone and there aren’t many on the sidelines either. There are a few sets of bleachers but seating capacity can’t be more than 500. This is all to say that despite the fact the tenants of the field have won five state titles since 2016 and consistently make deep runs in the Texas state playoffs, it is a stadium that is not nicer than Ryan Field.
A few miles down the road – a single-lane, 65-mile-per-hour road – is another high school football stadium in a Dallas suburb called Celina. It’s got a giant stanchion at one side with a press box that, on the outward-facing side, has a large Chicago Bears-style C that is backlit. It’s bright. Inside, there’s a massive training facility at one end zone. There’s a well-kept turf field. It’s the type of place — along with the McKinney stadium a few more miles down the same road — that is the grandiose picture of Texas high school football.
I distinctly remember telling my cousin that night – even without attending a game at that stadium – it is nicer than Ryan Field.
Yet that one in Gunter reminded me of old Ryan Field.
There was something to the old Ryan Field that felt authentic. There was nowhere to hide its age and thus the history of both Northwestern (not terribly historic) and Big Ten (very historic) football. What you saw was what you got.
That showed particularly on the home sideline – more of a structure than the away sideline – that was a miniature maze designed for a time when college football wasn’t an essential part of the American academic experience. The ceilings were low. The lighting inside the halls barely provided any light.
And once you got to your seat on that side, there was not much distance between you and the field. It was like attending and getting the access you can only get at a high school football game.
The other part of the old Ryan Field that will always linger in my mind is the hill in the end zone, the type of quirk that you don’t see in any modern stadium. That hill led down to the field that never quite seemed freshly mowed either.
All of this is to say that the old Ryan Field was not perfect, especially for a college football stadium. In fact, it was far from it. But that imperfection was part of it. Somehow Chicago – even though Evanston itself is quite beautiful – and its charm snuck its way a few miles north toward the old world stadium. You felt it in the same way you feel it when you take a walk through Wrigleyville.
Now, Northwestern says hello to a new world stadium. It cost more than $800 million to build. It will have, allegedly, impeccable views regardless of your seat location (something I will report back on), and all of the amenities of fandom that have snuck in as a way to make more revenue.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with moving forward. Penn State is doing that as we speak with its $700 million west sideline renovation. That’s part of the college athletics process now.
But just as the stadium in Gunter or the erector set of Beaver Stadium or the halls where I watched the entire Penn State coaching staff walk behind me while I ordered a hot dog of Ryan Field had warmth, I hope our college football stadiums with their bells and whistles never lose that.
They are important locations for celebration, for community, for connection. Just in the same way picking up a book, playing some vinyl or opening up a pack of football cards feels raw and real, being in those places feels raw and real in a way you can’t quite get another way. And as things become more digital – recognizing that you’re reading this on a screen of some sort right now while probably streaming something on another – the tranquility that an analog experience can provide is precious.
Maybe part of the charm of old Ryan Field – just in the way Beaver Stadium still does – was that it forced you to embrace that. There simply was no escaping that. While feeling is something that we have to chase harder these days, it’s warm when we find it. Eventually, the new Ryan Field will get there too.
But that ability of the old one is what made me nostalgic for the worst, now-extinct stadium in the Big Ten this week.
Old Ryan Field wasn’t great. But it was great and I think – I’m pretty sure – that I will miss it come Friday night.
vs 
Time: 8 p.m.
TV: Fox
Announcers: Connor Onion, Robert Griffin III, Alexa Landestoy
Radio: Penn State Sports Network
Announcers: Steve Jones, Jack Ham, Brian Tripp
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