Last Friday Night, it was off to Piscataway, NJ along the banks of the Raritan as I checked out Rutgers Stadium with the Scarlet Knights taking on UConn in a nationally-televised game. This would be my second time seeing the Huskies in three weeks. Once again, the weatherman lucked out with an absolutely beautiful day and evening for football. I’ve been holding off on making the short ride for a stadium visit here until renovations were complete and luckily one of our clients does work with Knights football and we were able to get some free tickets to the game. I went with my co-workers and we ended up tailgating for a few hours before heading in. The traffic can be atrocious in this area and with this being a weeknight game, it is even worse thanks to awful Jersey rush-hour. Parking is not great for Rutgers football as the lots are spread out well away from campus (unless your a rare, parking pass holder) and you have to take shuttles into the stadium. The lots were $20, but there is also an expensive $30 area turned into a lot across the street from Rutgers Stadium at Johnson Park. This was the much better alternative and ended being a good plan. We got there in plenty of time, had a nice time tailgating, however the ride out onto two-lane River Road was annoyingly long.

Let’s talk about the game for a little bit. I have gone through the last 18 new stadium visits without a great game (last one was UNLV vs Oregon State), so I was due one and this delivered. After Rutgers went up 7-0, UConn ran the kickoff back 100 yards to tie it up. The Knights were able to come back and go up 17-7, before the Huskies ran off seventeen straight, thanks in large part to Jordan Todman (who finished with 123 yards rushing). After the 24-17 lead held up through the 3rd, Rutgers rattled off a long drive only to get stuffed on 4th down at the UConn 12. The defense played great and Rutgers got the ball back as freshman QB Chas Dodd hit a 52 yard bomb on the second option of a screen play to tie the game with 3:53 left. After another defensive stand and another long Dodd pass, Rutgers kicked the game-winning field goal with :13 left and won 27-24. Dodd was unbelievable in his first start, going 18/29 for 322 yards, 2 TD and 0 INT. He threw a ton of good balls and had lots of poise, so it looks like he’s probably going to assume the QB role over Tom Savage. Fans appreciated the great work by Dodd, but the guy they did not approve of (and booed several times) was the “savior of the program” Greg Schiano.

He’s in his tenth year and has done remarkable things with a Rutgers program that was dormant for decades. He took over in 2000 and recruited well and did some excellent things, the culmination of which came during the biggest game/win in school history vs #3 Louisville in 2006. However, fans think he is not an ideal “game” coach and that was evident during this one with just bad play calling and unnecessarily using the failed Wildcat formation, which the fans loathed. The fans here are passionate and as I’ve seen in my visit to The RAC, they come out in droves (and Red) to support Knights athletics. In-game atmosphere was great and I loved hearing the various three or four chants that Rutgers fans yell out. However, I was disappointed to see that only 2 of the 11 games in the stadium after the renovation to enlargen capacity have been sold out. They’ve jam-packed the stadium several times, but during our game, there were whole sections empty. I can certainly sense the frustration in the crowd with the direction of this season.  I’m also learning that the late arrival/early leaving thing is more common than I thought in college football as it still sucks to see it wherever you go. Overhearing talk from the regulars, it has become an increasing issue at Rutgers Stadium. Don’t get me wrong though, the in-game atmosphere is still enjoyable.

As for the stadium, it’s pretty nice, though I’m certainly against a $104 million renovation where other sports get cut (swimming, tennis, crew were some of the sports dropped to help save money) and students have to pay extra fees. The outside architecture is kind of a mish-mash of designs with each side being oddly different. Inside, I love the use of red and the beautiful new scoreboard which says at the top “The Birthplace of College Football”. The bowl is decent and the two very steep second decks of seats on the sides offer the type of high views in which I enjoy, even though they’re far from the field. Though it is part of luxury seating, I do like how they cleverly designed a lounge area (from the Welcome Center) within the middle of the end student section area. It’ s hard to see throughout the stadium, yet offers a cool view with tables and barstools in the middle of bleacher seating. Overall, a great game, fun experience and nice stadium to watch football. For the full review, click here.

Last Thursday, I got a phone call from a friend who had a pair of tickets to the Giants-Titans game. I usually like to reserve judgement on new stadiums for a year or two…but you would be insane to pass this up. So it was off to the New Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ for only the second Giants regular-season game there. The first issue was how to get there. This “should” be a simple procedure, you drive to the Meadowlands Complex, which has 23,600 parking spaces and you tailgate or go to the game. Nope. Now, if you don’t have a parking pass, they won’t allow you into the Meadowlands to park. You’re directed to this odd area of four or five office complexes in Lyndhurst, where there are small lots. A bus shuttle then takes you to Lot P in the complex and then another shuttle comes and brings you to the stadium. You still have to fork over $25 for both areas. I don’t understand why they did this and when we got there we met up with a tailgate and talking to some of the people there, it seems not all season-ticket holders got parking passes. Really screwed up if you ask me. The one good thing I will say about the off-site parking is the traffic arriving was nearly non-existent and leaving was very easy too (we took Rt. 17 North to hook up with I-80). There are other transportation means (NJ Transit/train or a bus to the Port Authority in Manhattan), which have had some problems thus far, but I would think get ironed out soon. The tailgating scene around the stadium was pretty good and Giants fans seem like a nice crowd to hand around with.

Before the game, I also got to meet up with Gary Herman who runs the website, Royalty Tours USA. Gary has quite a busy schedule as he is at a live game just about every night, which is amazing. We met up once before at Citi Field and it was great to meet and chat again as he gave some of his thoughts on the new stadium.

To be frank, the stadium is ugly. The outside is so drab and uninviting, for $1.6 billion couldn’t they have spruced it up a bit? I understand the neutrality becomes two teams call it home, but it just looks like these big silver blinds covering the entire exterior. Inside, it has a similar look and feel to the old Giants Stadium: three levels surrounding and enclosing the field. The two most noticeable changes were the abundancy of club/luxury seating and the monster video boards. There are 10,000 club seats and 229 suites with most of the second level consisting of these. Some of these clubs are quite exuberant, especially the Coaches Club. As for the boards, I think four (one in each corner) is a bit overboard, but they incorporated them into the seating design as a large section of seats above the second level sits between these scoreboards. They are expectedly beautiful with HD video that is stunning. Our seats were terrific, Section 140 about 11 rows from the field at the 30-yard line (see picture below). I would never buy seats like this, so the opportunity to see a game this close was awesome and I kept getting distracted watching Rob Bironas warm-up and Jeff Fisher pace the sidelines.

I didn’t get to explore as much of the stadium as I normally like to, but I did find aspects I liked a lot: The concourses had some really nice features, including the “Legacy Club” for the New York Giants. It’s a room with trophies, displays and mementos through the Giants history and though the room is small, it’s elegant and full of great items to study (including the three Lombardi Trophies and the busts of important/retired players). The coolest thing I’ve seen in the concourse through all my stadium trips was at this one food stand that had these gigantic video screens above them. One had on the Giants game feed, another had game stats and the last had the NFL RedZone feed (my favorite). Pretty awesome while your waiting in line! The food was great too…so much variety from Pepper & Egg sandwiches to Roast Pork to an abundance of Mrs. Fields Cookie stands. They also incorporated not only New York specialties (Nathan’s Hot Dogs, Corned Beef, Pizza, Knishes), but they even threw a bone to North Jersey by having Taylor Ham Sandwiches. Lastly, I loved the game-day atmosphere (though I would think it’s rare to find a bad NFL game atmosphere). Giants fans are loyal, loud and overall not rude or obnoxious. The focus is strictly on the game as there are no Giants Cheerleaders and hardly any music during breaks in game play. Fans will boo loudly if their player does something dumb (see Kareem McKenzie), but it’s a great crowd and the stadium was very loud early in the game and after a TD.

As for the game…yikes. I’ve watched a lot of football in my life and the Giants gave a top-five performance in terms of undiscipline and mistakes. They had four or five unsportsmanlike penalty calls that had big impacts on the game. In addition, a chop block in the end zone led to a safety, a penalty took them out of field goal range and they had a lost fumble and interception inside the Titans ten yard line. New York was down 10-0, before tying it up before the half on an Ahmad Bradshaw 10-yard run. So despite the mistakes, they were still in it. However, Tennessee took control midway thru the third after the aforementioned safety and then a quick six play TD drive. They went on to win 29-10, despite being outgained by a whopping 200 total yards (271-471), which goes to show the amount of mistakes and penalties. Tennessee’s Chris Johnson ran 32 times for 125 yards, while Eli Manning threw for 386 yds. It was funny because during the game my Bills (who are so dysfunctional and had such a piss-poor offseason start to re-building) were somehow hanging with New England and I was anxiously awaiting a game highlight on the scoreboard to see what was going on. By the way, the weather for our game was as perfect as it gets. Skies were overcast, so the September sun wasn’t scorching down and the temperature was 70. Just perfect.

That was only my third NFL stadium and I’m looking forward to adding on some more.  As always, check my official review of the visit here: #93 New Meadowlands Stadium. My unusually busy stretch of new stadiums continues as I will visit my 14th college stadium and 94th official facility next Friday as I make the long awaited short trip to Rutgers Stadium. I’ll probably have some random post before that, otherwise  enjoy the weekend…remember the Ryder Cup is on, go USA!

This past Saturday, I made the trip up to East Hartford, CT to check out the UConn Huskies’ beautiful new football stadium. The success of this program is amazing as they have won bowl games and done a tremendous job building their team as they have only been in the D-1A level for ten years. Rentschler was built about 40 minutes West of their campus in Storrs and I’m guessing it was to utilize open space and the population base of Hartford. That open space is site of one of the more interesting backgrounds for a stadium…it’s on an old airfield! Rentschler Field, the airport was an old airspace occupied by Pratt & Whitney and there’s a lot of history on this space. The surrounding parking uses this area and there are times when you are driving and walking on old runways.

Overall, what a great stadium this is inside and out. A beautiful outside face to the stadium (see above) greets the majority of fans on their way in. A lot of nice touches were created making the stadium experience nice. The Connecticut High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame is located in the concourse with a ton of informative plaques honoring high achieving athletes, coaches and contributors. There’s even a small room displaying trophies. In addition, on the South side of the stadium, between the two seating decks are large posters with Rentschler Airfield history and all of big events and famous people who have been associated with the site. The two-level seating bowl is good with a few quirks on the second deck making it stand out a little bit. I love how that second level stops at the West end making it wide open. They left this space for people to mill around and built the scoreboard here quite low (but easily visible to all). That low scoreboard leads to an open outside view with the small Hartford skyline in the distance.  I kept comparing it to the last college stadium I just saw (UCF’s Bright House Networks Stadium), because they are so similar, both around 40,000 seats and built in 2003-2007. UConn’s was better in many aspects.

As for the whole atmosphere, I thought the tailgating scene was good. It was a morning tailgate with the start time being 12:00 PM. My favorite part was seeing so much Hartford Whalers memorabilia. Fans had flags, hats, I even saw a giant hockey puck. The passion for that franchise is still there nearly fifteen years after the team left. It would be nice to see them get a team back at some point. Plus, they have one of the most cleverly designed logos in sports (see here) and an awesome song (Brass Bonanza). Anyway, UConn’s numbers are really good, they sell most tickets and typically are 95% capacity or higher. The stands were generally packed and so was the student section. However, Husky fans are tardy as the place was only 60-70% filled at kickoff. A lot of fans left early too and I mean way early (mid 3rd quarter in a two score game). Overall, it’s a fine atmosphere with a few traditional chants and middle of the road stadium noise.

UConn ended up winning the game going way, but they had quite a fright in the first half as they played poorly. It looked like they would coast to a win, especially after getting a pick-6 three plays into the game and then following it up with another score on their possession. But they ended up tied at 14 at the half and I heard through the post game show that Head Coach Randy Edsell absolutely lit into his team. Both the starting QB and RB were taken out and the Huskies scored on four straight possessions as they dominated the second half. This game though was one of my pet peeves about college football…it took so freakin’ long. 3 hours and 40 minutes, if it was a close game it would have been four hours without overtime. UB ended up running an amazing 90 plays and had 29 third downs. If the NFL can have 3 hour games, why can’t college follow suit!!! Then again, I’m talking about the only sport/organization in the US that doesn’t have a playoff system to decide a champion.

Everything was smooth until my ride home when I had a trouble on I-95 South. I pulled into a rest stop just to get a bottle of water since sitting in that hot sun kind of drained me…but coming back to the car it wouldn’t start. It’s not a battery issue, but may be the starter. Anyway, by the time AAA came 45 minutes later, it started back up. Not that bad of a delay, happened in an OK spot and most importantly it was coming home and not going to the game! That was my first car issue in all of these travels, so that’s not bad at all and I hope I go another 92 without another.

The review to the right (#92 Rentschler Field) has a more complete review of the whole stadium experience. All of the other products on the site will be updated after I do a review/post on the New Meadowlands Stadium, which will likely be towards the end of the week.