With Rutgers’ move to the Big Ten two years ago, it opened up an entirely new group of stadiums to which Scarlet Knight fans can travel to cheer on the team. While working for a another site, I discussed a couple of college towns I visited last season to discuss the ambiance of the town for the Badgers and Hawkeyes.
However, what about the stadiums themselves? What is it like there, and what makes the best stadium? This has been done in numerous articles (examples here and here) by our own Bob Cancro, and others have also done stories that rank stadiums in the conference. I recently read an article by Roy Hatfield (@roybhatfield) on Gobbler Country, the Virginia Tech SB site. His article used the stats of capacity and support to measure ACC stadiums, and I decided to try out the same thing for the Big Ten’s houses.
Using Phil Steele’s guide, I put together the stats for our conference. Here’s how the overall stats look:
Stadium | Capacity | 2015 % Capacity | Capacity Rank | % Capacity Rank | B1G Score |
Michigan | 107,601 | 100% | 1 | T-3 | 4 |
Penn State | 106,572 | 94% | 2 | 7 | 9 |
Ohio State | 104,944 | 102% | 3 | 2 | 5 |
Nebraska | 86,047 | 103% | 4 | 1 | 5 |
Wisconsin | 80,321 | 97% | 5 | 6 | 11 |
Michigan State | 75,005 | 100% | 6 | T-3 | 9 |
Iowa | 70,585 | 90% | 7 | 9 | 16 |
Illinois | 60,670 | 70% | 8 | 13 | 21 |
Purdue | 57,236 | 66% | 9 | 14 | 23 |
Indiana | 52,929 | 84% | 10 | 10 | 20 |
Rutgers | 52,454 | 91% | 11 | 8 | 19 |
Maryland | 51,802 | 78% | 12 | 11 | 23 |
Minnesota | 50,805 | 100% | 13 | T-3 | 16 |
Northwestern | 47,330 | 71% | 14 | 12 | 26 |
In this measure, larger stadiums have an edge, for sure. However, it can be argued that larger stadiums have a stronger influence on games, particularly when filled with fans. So, the support ranking is just as important. For example, while Illinois, our week 7 home opponent, has a larger stadium than dear old HPSS, but with only an average of 70% capacity, it is not as imtimidating as HPSS, with fewer seats, but a 91% capacity.
Also, as our team has discovered, playing away at Michigan, Ohio State, Nebraska, and Michigan State can be an intimidating experience, with both large capacities as well as being filled for games at an average of 100% (or more!) for games.
So, while you can all do the math yourself, I have ranked the teams’ stadiums by the ranking using this formula. They are:
Stadium | B1G Rank |
Michigan | 1 |
Ohio State | T-2 |
Nebraska | T-2 |
Michigan State | T-4 |
Penn State | T-4 |
Wisconsin | 6 |
Iowa | T-7 |
Minnesota | T-7 |
Rutgers | 9 |
Indiana | 10 |
Illinois | 11 |
Purdue | T-12 |
Maryland | T-12 |
Northwestern | 14 |
OK, those of you who have visited the stadiums, let us know what you think? Do these rankings fit your perceptions so far of the stadiums at which we have played? At this point, we still have not played away against Iowa, Illinois, Northwestern, Purdue, and Minnesota (though that one will happen this season), our visits to all of the B1G East stadiums as well as trips to Lincoln and Madison gives us a pretty good picture of away games in the conference.
It is interesting that Rutgers has already played in six of the seven of the stadiums that rank in the top half of the conference. We also have already seen how much of a challenge the Scarlet Knights have found playing there over the past two seasons.
This may also give us a picture of which stadiums you want to visit I the future. While I have visited a couple of the towns, this will be a personal goal for the future as Rutgers continues to grow as a program. Coach Ash, let’s take these games from what they have been to games where it is considered a challenge to take on an away Scarlet Knights squad!
So what do you think about these rankings?