[NU Sports] Saturdays at Dyche Stadium

[SjT (Stephen J. Truog)]

Well, we've been discussing this for years on the list and if anyone had the answers, they'd be a millionaire by now. :)

I think the one thing that we can rule out is the quality of product on the field -- since 1995, NU has had more fantastic finishes at home than anyone else and fans have gotten more than their money's worth in exciting, memorable and thrilling football.

As for the on-campus stadium, it would be nice (aside from exacerbating the traffic woes -- maybe Olympic funds could have been used to extend LSD to Gurnee! :) ), but hard to see where we could do it.

A more workable solution might be to "downsize" our stadium ala Stanford -- the south end zone seats are bad seats and too far away from the field. Bring them in closer and make it just a few rows in the end zone with a nice, huge scoreboard behind it and a nice entrance/sign on the flip side facing Central Avenue.

Then bite the bullet and work with the city of Evanston on traffic flow -- with Evanston's downtown moving south, a lot of the storefronts on Central (the old Loews theater, etc.) seem to be empty. Maybe there's a way for the university to start buying up land for either more lanes or more parking in between the Metra and El stations on Central.

And then we have to push ourselves as Chicago's team -- especially since we've been playing better football the past decade or so while ND and the Illini have been in down spells. Give away tickets to school kids. Give away tickets to stadium neighbors. Give away tickets to the entire friggin North Shore. Just put butts in those seats! A lot of them will like what they see and come back.

Of course, all this will take is finding an alumni like T. Boone Pickens with deep pockets, establishing friendly relations with the stadium neighbors and city of Evanston and a couple other bazillion breaks ... but who knows until you try, right!:)

GO CATS!!!
-SjT

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STEPHEN J. TRUOG
sjtruog at yahoo.com
GO CATS!!!