Late Night Chronicles 33: Alone In The Stadium

This was originally published on Facebook on October 30, 2009

When asked if I wanted to do it, I volunteered right away. I mean, who wouldn't want to do it? I grew up in Iowa City- Hawkeye sports, whether it be football or basketball have been a part of my life since childhood- and really, let's face it- the place is almost tranquil without any people in it. Yes, I got Kinnick Stadium all to myself for ten lovely hours- and it was the closest thing to one of those perfect nights that you can get. It was late October- but it was warm- and it was raining on and off, so it smelled like fall and fresh rain- and it was just me and 70,000 or so empty seats, alone in the night.

Perfect.

It took me most of the night, but I finally put my finger on it at about seven thirty this morning. Although I'd been to Kinnick a few times before, I think regular visits- albeit work-related and therefore not as much fun as booze-fueled visits to actually watch the game- have finally and strangely made an actual college football fan out of me and convinced me just how incredibly cool Kinnick really is. The secret lies in two ingredients, I think: the bricks and the arches.

So many stadiums today are overpriced obscene palaces of excess (Yankees, Cowboys I'm lookin' at you) and without question, the trend seems to be naming even college stadiums after corporate sponsors. It makes perfect fiscal sense- especially if said corporate sponsors are willing to pay top dollar for the rights, but you have to admit TCF Bank Stadium just doesn't really have the iconic ring to it that 'Kinnick Stadium' does. There's a sense of history about the place that convinces you of the concentrated vitality of the place, even at night. Even with no fans in the stands, if you just stand there at one of the corners of the stadium and look--- you can feel it. I talked to one of my homies last night a bit before I really dug in and started checking the place and he said he always felt a little sad that we just use it for about six Saturdays out of the year and that's it- but those six Saturdays, well, anything can happen. And that palpable feeling that this place, empty though it may be and dark and damp though it may be, stays with the place year round I think. You can just stand there, look, feel the emptiness of the place and just know--- this is where anything can happen.

But the bricks... I'm really convinced that the secret to Kinnick's success as one of the iconic stadiums of college football lies in the bricks. Bricks to me, scream classy. They scream style. They say, 'we are old school and we are cool.' And the sheer number of bricks tells a story as well. If you think about it- back in the day, each of those bricks had to be laid individually, one at a time by the workers that built the Stadium. The history of Kinnick Stadium- in fact of Iowa City is to be found in the bricks. Those bricks were there long before the Hospital became the soul-sucking monster of a complex that it is. They were there long before Coralville, University Heights and Iowa City had begun to run together. Once upon a time, Kinnick was the west edge of town. And the City and the University, amazingly, grew up around it. Can't say that about many stadiums out there.

The second secret: arches. Jesus, I wish I was better at math, because I would so totally be an architect. Just walking around last night, I was struck by the amount of arches scattered throughout the structure of the stadium. In today's modern world, it seems like you never see a good arch anymore. Or if you do, there's usually a fast-food restaurant attached to it, but again, as with the bricks, arches as an architectural feature practically drip with an 'old school' feel that I just love. Arches are dead sexy. No really-- modern architects should take note and stop being all angular about things. Bring back the arch! It's old school and kids, there's no school like the old school.

Ten long, lonely hours in Kinnick convinced me: it belongs in the any top 25 list of the Greatest College Football Stadiums of all time. And if they haven't made one of those yet, they need too... in fact, I honestly think you could go one step further and expand it to 100 Greatest Stadiums and Kinnick to me would make the top 50 easy. I haven't been to many of the so-called 'iconic stadiums' of the world- or even the country. But it'd be interesting to compare and contrast a lot of them. Wembley, Maracanã, Fenway, Wrigley, Lambeau, The Rose Bowl, the Big House, The Horeshoe, Rocky Top, Death Valley... I am now convinced that Kinnick, as a stadium can compete with the best of them. At night, you can feel the history of the place and feel the vitality in the empty dark.

This is a place where anything can happen.