Saturday Shrines: Sporting News ranks the top 20 college football stadiums

[DodgerKing]

Old doesn't mean bad experience. Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are complete trash, but they are a good experience for a diehard baseball fan.

I am surprised the LA Coliseum isn't up there, but it is off campus

The Rose Bowl is even further from UCLA than the Coliseum is from USC

 

[Big Dawg 23]

I think Sanford Stadium belongs higher on the list. Outside of my Dawgs Stadium nothing beats Death Valley and especially at night.

 

[Ramy]

What? No love for Commonwealth Stadium?

 

[Lkr]

The Rose Bowl is even further from UCLA than the Coliseum is from USC

I know, but just the fact it is the Rose Bowl gives it a place. I wouldn't necessarily list it there for UCLA games, but the fact that it has hosted the Rose Bowl Game and National Championship Games throughout its history. I don't think any stadium is as iconic as the Rose Bowl for college football

 

[SamCdbs]

I note this. If we had a similar discussion in baseball, we would actually be talking about architecture. Here we are not. Football stadiums, particularly at the college level, are pretty much all the same. Rectangular concrete deals, surrounded, in the typical case of a rural based land grant college that make up most of Div I-A, by fields, slummy appartments, or non-descript college buildings. Very few places are really special outside the gates, and nobody has mentioned them, at least for that reason (Washington, Tennessee, Mississippi, etc).

Rather, we are talking about the people IN the stadiums on game day. This is why college football is, as Bill King says, "God's Sport". This is why it is so special. And why those of us that love it will fight to our dying day to defend it from those that are incapable of understanding it and want to RUIN it by trading a fall night in Baton Rouge for a semi-final night game in Jerry World.