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OT: Stadium Tour
- Thread starter RocketsandCanes
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Highline17
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Your stadium write up aside, wholeheartedly agree on Madison. Absolutely fantastic city, great urban city.
RocketsandCanes
RocketsandCanes
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UNC has a cool tailgating scene. You're going to have a blast. Parking is kind of tough to come by so maybe try and get that taken care of prior to gameday. Your eyes will be bleeding from all the Carolina Blue you will see during the day. Keenan itself is cool. I like NC State's stadium much better, but Keenan is a cool one to start off with. They will have a solid crowd there for sure.
NC has Red Oak beer which I am pretty fond of. Maybe try to grab some of that for pre-game.
Also, good luck on your chase! You should post a recap in here after your visit to Keenan.
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Thank ya sir! I was also thinking about going to the NC state game on November 2nd as well. Definitely will grab some Red Oaks too and try it out
RocketsandCanes
RocketsandCanes
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North Carolina is a great state to start out in. They have a ton of different schools in a relatively small region.
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I know man, like 3 major campuses connected by 40 minutes of each other and a fairly decent size airport in the middle of them. What I do for work makes it a perfect place to start
RocketsandCanes
RocketsandCanes
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Game: Bowling Green State University Falcons @ University of Michigan Wolverines
Date: 9-16-23
Location: Ann Arbor, MI
Stadium: Michigan Stadium aka "The Big House"
Stadium Total: 32/133 = 24% complete
This was the first game of what I mentioned might be a lean year. I've got one more guaranteed game on the schedule. BUT, last night I might have caught a break with a work trip for my wife to Pittsburgh. She suggested me tagging along for the last few days, staying through the weekend, and possibly watching L-Ville at Pitt. We will see if that ends up working out. Fingers crossed and also fingers crossed that it doesn't fall on the same timeslot as the UM-UNC game.
But back to the Big House. Last weekend was the 5th annual CFB trip with a couple of my buddies from Toledo. One of them lives just north of Detroit so we decided on Michigan for this year. Bought a parking pass at Ann Arbor Pioneer High School which ended up working out great. Got to the lot around 1pm for a 7:40pm kickoff. Got a nice little setup going with a tv in the trunk of the car and watching football for most of the time leading up to the game. Great tailgate scene between our lot and the University of Michigan Golf Course, both within a 5-10 minute walk from the stadium.
I was pretty exited to be able to compare the Big House to the Horseshoe in Columbus, which so far has been my most impressive in-game atmosphere I've been to. It lived up to the hype. I didn't get the wow factor walking in to the bowl from the concourse like I did walking into the C-Deck at the Shoe for the first time (only other place I've had that feeling was my first time walking into Wrigley Field), but it was really close and the atmosphere throughout the game was comparable, and definitely better than the one game against a G5 team (UNLV) I saw at the Shoe.
They had recently installed new LED lights throughout the stadium, which I did not really understand the hype for until it got dark and they were on full display. I took a couple of videos which I am not sure how to upload here but you can get the gist in the picture with the blue lights below.
The crowd was insane. 109,000 strong, and I believed it when they put the number on the scoreboard. The only people that left somewhat early where the student section around the end of the 3rd. I'm sure they had all been getting at it since the night before so that's understandable.
Michigan as a team did not look great in the game with 4 turnovers I believe, but they ended up beating BG pretty good in the end. The Toledo fan in me was happy about that.
There is no way to sugarcoat it but it's pretty darn uncomfortable to watch a full game in those bleachers when there is a 109,000 packed in pretty tightly. We had aisle seats and had to kind of push in on the row to finally get enough room for our last guy to sit down. But I think the atmosphere is worth the sore back at the end of the day.
Concessions were solid. Big (and only) con, like most CFB stadiums in the state of Michigan, is that they don't serve beer/alcohol. That is likely to change in the next few years as the state just made it legal to do so within the past year or so. So I'm sure it's only a matter of time before they all start selling it. It wasn't a big deal for use though because we had a pretty good drive to make back to Auburn Hills. On the other side of the coin, the Big House had two very important pluses to their concession game. The first is having Dearborn Sausage Company as their hot dog/sausage vendor. They make great stuff. Not quite Koegel's level great (only Michigan natives will understand that reference), but great nonetheless. My buddy had the hot dog which he said was awesome and I splurged and got the stadium sausage which was phenomenal. The second big plus is something that I'm sure some other places have, but it was the first time I've seen a coffee truck. I've gotten a regular hot coffee at a cold noon game before. But this was like a full blown coffee shop on wheels. It was the perfect thing after a long hot day of beer and tailgating. We all caffeinated at half time for the hour drive after the game let out. I wish all stadiums would do that. Don't bother paying $5.50 for a bottle of water. Absopure (another good MI company) has hydration stations throughout the concourse where they just give out free cups of water. It was funny watching the water salesmen at their table like 20 feet from the hydration stations with absolutely no one buying their product.
Overall I can't recommend it enough. I was the only night game of the year so the tickets were ungodly expensive for a game against a MAC school. Most I've ever spent on a CFB game, and that was just to get in the door because we were sitting in just regular seats in the end zone. But frankly it was worth every penny.
View from behind from our seats
Date: 9-16-23
Location: Ann Arbor, MI
Stadium: Michigan Stadium aka "The Big House"
Stadium Total: 32/133 = 24% complete
This was the first game of what I mentioned might be a lean year. I've got one more guaranteed game on the schedule. BUT, last night I might have caught a break with a work trip for my wife to Pittsburgh. She suggested me tagging along for the last few days, staying through the weekend, and possibly watching L-Ville at Pitt. We will see if that ends up working out. Fingers crossed and also fingers crossed that it doesn't fall on the same timeslot as the UM-UNC game.
But back to the Big House. Last weekend was the 5th annual CFB trip with a couple of my buddies from Toledo. One of them lives just north of Detroit so we decided on Michigan for this year. Bought a parking pass at Ann Arbor Pioneer High School which ended up working out great. Got to the lot around 1pm for a 7:40pm kickoff. Got a nice little setup going with a tv in the trunk of the car and watching football for most of the time leading up to the game. Great tailgate scene between our lot and the University of Michigan Golf Course, both within a 5-10 minute walk from the stadium.
I was pretty exited to be able to compare the Big House to the Horseshoe in Columbus, which so far has been my most impressive in-game atmosphere I've been to. It lived up to the hype. I didn't get the wow factor walking in to the bowl from the concourse like I did walking into the C-Deck at the Shoe for the first time (only other place I've had that feeling was my first time walking into Wrigley Field), but it was really close and the atmosphere throughout the game was comparable, and definitely better than the one game against a G5 team (UNLV) I saw at the Shoe.
They had recently installed new LED lights throughout the stadium, which I did not really understand the hype for until it got dark and they were on full display. I took a couple of videos which I am not sure how to upload here but you can get the gist in the picture with the blue lights below.
The crowd was insane. 109,000 strong, and I believed it when they put the number on the scoreboard. The only people that left somewhat early where the student section around the end of the 3rd. I'm sure they had all been getting at it since the night before so that's understandable.
Michigan as a team did not look great in the game with 4 turnovers I believe, but they ended up beating BG pretty good in the end. The Toledo fan in me was happy about that.
There is no way to sugarcoat it but it's pretty darn uncomfortable to watch a full game in those bleachers when there is a 109,000 packed in pretty tightly. We had aisle seats and had to kind of push in on the row to finally get enough room for our last guy to sit down. But I think the atmosphere is worth the sore back at the end of the day.
Concessions were solid. Big (and only) con, like most CFB stadiums in the state of Michigan, is that they don't serve beer/alcohol. That is likely to change in the next few years as the state just made it legal to do so within the past year or so. So I'm sure it's only a matter of time before they all start selling it. It wasn't a big deal for use though because we had a pretty good drive to make back to Auburn Hills. On the other side of the coin, the Big House had two very important pluses to their concession game. The first is having Dearborn Sausage Company as their hot dog/sausage vendor. They make great stuff. Not quite Koegel's level great (only Michigan natives will understand that reference), but great nonetheless. My buddy had the hot dog which he said was awesome and I splurged and got the stadium sausage which was phenomenal. The second big plus is something that I'm sure some other places have, but it was the first time I've seen a coffee truck. I've gotten a regular hot coffee at a cold noon game before. But this was like a full blown coffee shop on wheels. It was the perfect thing after a long hot day of beer and tailgating. We all caffeinated at half time for the hour drive after the game let out. I wish all stadiums would do that. Don't bother paying $5.50 for a bottle of water. Absopure (another good MI company) has hydration stations throughout the concourse where they just give out free cups of water. It was funny watching the water salesmen at their table like 20 feet from the hydration stations with absolutely no one buying their product.
Overall I can't recommend it enough. I was the only night game of the year so the tickets were ungodly expensive for a game against a MAC school. Most I've ever spent on a CFB game, and that was just to get in the door because we were sitting in just regular seats in the end zone. But frankly it was worth every penny.
View from behind from our seats
Last edited:
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