Trip to Champaign

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maroonfive

maroonfive

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It was interesting. The campus is spread out and not very organized and campustown was disappointing. There are lots of great buildings but it is not a beautiful campus. There was lots of blue and orange everywhere and it was a great day for football weather wise. Lots of tailgating and I could see a lot of our old Memorial Stadium in theirs. People were nice and not obnoxious at all. This was my first away Gopher game and found it interesting that fans are the same for the most part. There are also lots of ads and promos just like at TCF during timeouts. I was surprised that the crowd was not loud at all. They did not have a lot to cheer about but even Gopher fans stand up and can cheer on 3rd down. They were more interested in their band which was average at best than the play of their football team. Our pregame is much better but they did play the rouser 3 times for us. Memorial Stadium had a 121 million dollar renovation and I am glad they did not tear it down and build a new stadium. It has great history. The biggest problem is the scoreboard, third rate for a Big Ten school and they only have one. It was bad. All in all a great experience and a 17-3 win. We were out of Champaign and on the freeway by 7 and home by 2. Assembly Hall on the other hand, what were they thinking?

Go Gophers !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

Nicest fans yet, close ahead of Syracuse. Campus is very "Big Ten". Not "beautiful" but classic. They seem to be in a rebuilding program for student housing, which is good. Parked a couple of blocks away for $20. Bought two $60 40-yard line lower deck seats for $20 each. The guy we sat with said he paid $10,000 for his 8 seat licenses, but it included basketball priority as well (don't know how many BB tickets he had).

Stadium was upgraded very nicely without ruining its classic look as well. All bench seating, with STH seatback option like we do. A lot of orange. Scoreboard was not huge, but sufficed--something bigger IMO would overwhelm the new bowl end and not fit with the stadium's history. I liked their band and student seating on the other end. Play clocks poorly located, but not as horrific as LA Coliseum. Fast concessions, average to low-end food.
 

On TV it looked like a lot of empty seats. Didn't catch the attendance figures. What kind of capacity doe their memorial Stadium have?
 

I had the same impressions as Highway right down to paying $20 for tix on the $50. Most of the fans were great. A couple of them went out of their way to talk to us and answer questions about their school including a classic stadium dedicated to WWI veterans. They were also very complimentary toward our stadium and the direction of our football program. The Illini definitely went up a notch or two in my book.

Go Gophers!
 

I was in Champaign last summer. That is a tough locale. Not an attractive town and a bit backwards was my impression, right there with West Lafayette. They've had some success recruiting in basketball and football though. I don't know how.
 


Had a great time in Champaign this weekend. My crew and I got into Champaign on Friday night and hit up The Blind Pig Co. for some beers, then checked out Distihl (but wait was a bit long for a table), then ran over to Guido's for some cocktails and dinner. It was 'Dad's Weekend' there, and not shockingly, and Guido's delivered an older man hitting on girls 30 years his junior in a pathetic display. Good times.

From there we moved over a couple blocks to Green St. where the more traditional 'college bars' were. None looked all that enticing so we just walked thru, taking it in, and headed back to the Blind Pig for 1 more drink. Wasn't real impressed with Green Street, but I'm most likely just too old for college bars any more.

Next morning we grabbed our supplies and tailgated in one of the gameday grass lots ($20 to get in). Had a terrific time doing this, and overall the whole area had a really solid 'gating scene. Some friendly Illini fans stopped by to chat with us, offered us some terrific spicy polish sausage (which we paid back in liquor). Not surprisingly, we were not given a hard time by a single person in Orange and Blue. Headed for the stadium at about 2:20, in our seats by at about 2 minutes to kickoff.

We sat up in the upper deck Gopher section (bought tix thru the U), decent seats in terms of view, but man is it a shear slope up there in the UD. Glad we were only a few rows back. The whole place was a morgue all first half, but the crowd was a bit bigger than I expected, given the state of the Illini season. Student section was probably about 2/3rds full, and pretty lifeless. Gopher fans were pretty quiet as well, but we picked it up after the first TD. We had a guy behind us lead the 'that's another Gopher first down' chant. Late in the 4th I jumped up and got 4 rounds of 'Who Hates Iowa?!?' going. It was well received, given that the Gophs were about to clinch the game. Hopefully it left Illini fans confused and modestly amused.

Overall an excellent time, especially the tailgating.
 

I traveled to Illinois for the Gophers' visit in 2001 and remember most people being very friendly. Memorial Stadium's renovation had not yet occurred, but needed to. The place looked generally tired and the concourses made pre renovation Williams Arena/old Mariucci Arena look fancy. The concession lines moved slowly that day with a far from capacity crowd. A sell out would really have taxed resources.

We actually stayed in Chicago in order to take in a 9/11 rescheduled Pirates-Cubs game on Friday and a Saints-Bears game on Sunday which resulted in us pulling in to Champaign about 45 minutes before kickoff. Having no real experience with on campus football, to our surprise, all the parking close to the stadium was for season ticket holders only. My buddy pulled our rental (with Illinois plates) into a lot and asked the kid "How much to park here?" He replied that it was season ticket parking only. My buddy then replied "I know. So how much to park here?" The kid got it that time and said "$20, put it in the back corner." Although we didn't worry much, it was nice not find ourself towed or booted afterwards.
 


An Illinois fan gave us 4 $60 tickets - had no interest in accepting money for them. We sold one which we did not need for $5.

:cool02::cool02:
 



I was in a parking lot by Illinois' Memorial Stadium. I forgot my 2 tickets on the dashboard of my Jeep. When I returned for the tickets, sure enough the windshield was broken. No, the 2 tickets were not gone, there were 6 tickets there.
 

Gopher Bandanna Guy said:
..... It was 'Dad's Weekend' there, and not shockingly, and Guido's delivered an older man hitting on girls 30 years his junior in a pathetic display. Good times.....


Overall an excellent time, especially the tailgating.
Click to expand...


Let's connect the dots here - Dr. Don was in Champaign for the game and you saw someone hitting on women 30 years his junior. Hmmm.....
 

Rescooter said:
Let's connect the dots here - Dr. Don was in Champaign for the game and you saw someone hitting on women 30 years his junior. Hmmm.....
Click to expand...

Damn you Rescooter...You lied. You said you had never met me. (p.s. The girls loved me!!!)
 

Had a great time at the game. I am a Gopher alum living and working in Lansing, MI, and this was the closest the Gophers would be coming my way, so I am glad I decided to road trip it down to Urbana-Champaign for the game with a friend. The campus was nice and scenic - pretty much what I would expect for a Big Ten school - but the location definitely hurts not being near anything else. For being a basketball school, I'd say the atmosphere around football gameday at UofI is pretty fair (better than Minnesota), so I can only imagine what a better season there would be like. As for the stadium, I do believe that the Big Ten has the best in the college venues in the country, but I will say that I wasn't truly awed by Memorial Stadium. The hollow concourse areas made me feel as if I were in a horse-racing track than a football stadium, but I definitely can appreciate the rich history of the stadium. Because my friend and I sat underneath an overhanging deck, we virtually had no view of the scoreboard, which I thought was a little disappointing. At least install some flat-panel TVs in the areas with obscure scoreboard viewing. The view of the field was good though.

Overall, great experience. The weather was unseasonably gorgeous, especially for November.
 



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