While I’ve had the fortune of attending over 220 major sporting events, I’ve only been to a handful of college football games.
It may seem atypical or strange to many sports fans across different parts of the United States, but I grew up as a huge sports fan who simply didn’t pay attention to or care about college sports.
There were a few obvious factors behind this dynamic – I grew up in the pro sports-dominated Chicago area and was raised by parents who didn’t attend a four-year college or university, leaving me without any allegiance or reason to care as a kid.
My interest was initially piqued in early 2009, when I first started to write about sports to myself after being inspired by seeing just how expansive the rest of the sports world was by watching ESPN on a daily basis. As a kid who grew up as almost exclusively a baseball fan, getting to learn about the dynamics of other leagues made me much more of a sports fan than just a baseball fan.
With that said, it wasn’t until the fall of 2014 when I began my tenure at the University of Missouri as an undergraduate student that I really started to get invested in college sports – thanks to being blessed by having an excellent football team my freshman year.
I attended a chunk of Mizzou Football games during my four-year stint at the school, almost all of which came as an underclassman in 2014 and 2015, including the 2014 SEC Championship Game at the now-defunct Georgia Dome.
Now over eight years removed from my time at college, it has still been since my junior year at Mizzou that I’ve made it to a college football game. There’s a few obvious barriers – I’m not located particularly close to any stadium (although I was for many years in Chicago), prices are often ridiculous and travel to college towns is more difficult than simply planning a trip to a major city.
Still, there’s a tangible charm to college football that no other sport in North America provides. Games are routinely intense and equally rife with unbelievable skill and unfathomable mistakes while the gargantuan crowds can’t be experienced at any other sporting event.
Games at Mizzou in 2014 were undoubtedly rowdy, but I know I’ve only experienced the very tip of the iceberg when it comes to unfettered madness within a college crowd.
With well over 100 stadiums to choose from, here are three that I’d love to catch a game at:
1. Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum – Los Angeles, CA
It’s hard to find many other venues that have as much history and tradition within them as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which has hosted everything from the Super Bowl and Summer Olympics to a World Series and three different NFL teams across the course of its lifespan.
Originally opening over 103 years ago in May 1923, the stadium has served as the home of the University of Southern California Trojans football team for its entire lifespan, while also serving as the home of the UCLA Bruins from 1928 to 1981.
While LA. Memorial Coliseum is certainly not the stadium that best exemplifies what the college football experience is like in America, it does perhaps serve as the perfect encapsulation of what the American sports experience is – surrounded by almost always perfect weather and natural beauty with the history of just about every outdoors sport emanating from within its walls.
Even at its old age, its legacy continues to build with each year. The coliseum served as the temporary home of the Los Angeles Rams from 2016 to 2019 after the team relocated back to Southern California, while it will become the first stadium to host events at three different Olympics games in 2028, joining the legacies of the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympics.
A UCLA-USC game would be the quintessential college football experience at the coliseum, but I’ll gladly take in any game in the stadium affectionately known by many as “The Grand Old Lady.”
2. Michigan Stadium – Ann Arbor, MI
Just about the most obvious inclusion one could have on a list like this, The Big House is certainly much more than a defunct Super Smash Bros. supermajor – it’s the embodiment of what autumn Saturdays means to millions upon millions of Americans.
Lauded for its massive footprint and astronomical capacity, “The Big House” is the largest stadium in the entire Western Hemisphere – while only trailing Narendra Modi Stadium in India and Rungrado 1st of May Stadium in North Korea as the biggest in the world, not including racetracks.
Its massive size also serves as a nod to the stadium’s beautiful simplicity, featuring a single wrap-around seating bowl that spans the entire stadium, giving Michigan Stadium a current capacity of 107,601 – which is actually a little over 2,000 fans fewer than its record-high capacity of 109,901, which was in effect from 2010 to 2015.
In addition to the sheer scale of the stadium, fans are almost guaranteed a raucous, energetic crowd, especially in any contest against a fellow Big Ten opponent. Although it’s an obvious bucket list item to check out an Ohio State-Michigan game, any conference rivalry will do for a fitting experience at The Big House.
3. Tiger Stadium – Baton Rouge, LA
It’s hard to pick a specific SEC stadium for this spot – Ole Miss provides a nationally renowned tailgate experience, Tennessee offers picturesque southern views alongside one of the sport’s most passionate fanbases while Alabama comes with an essential guarantee of a dominant performance and booming crowd.
Yet when it comes to trying to get all of that into one experience, my best bet is that a visit to Death Valley in Baton Rouge would do the trick.
Long regarded as one of the most intimidating venues in the sport, Tiger Stadium boasts a capacity of 102,321 fans, with the 102-year-old stadium containing the expansive history of one of America’s most treasured college football programs within it.
While LSU may not have the track record of decades-long dominance that Alabama brings to the table, they do supply that track record when it comes to gameday energy – always having a mix of lifelong diehard fans, students enjoying the ride and traveling college football fans hungry for a quintessential SEC experience.
Similar to Michigan Stadium, just about any conference game would do to provide a fitting gameday for the neutral fan such as myself (unless they were playing Mizzou, of course) – but it’s hard to not be partial towards an LSU-Alabama matchup, a rivalry that has blessed college football fans with some of the sport’s most memorable games in this millennium.
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