Posted August 4, 2009    

•Lou Holtz

•Tim Brewster

•Dan O'Brien

•Best Locker Room

•Preview Scrimmage

Stadium Ranks with UM's Greatest Glories 

The opening of TCF Bank Stadium this summer will be remembered for 100 years or more.  In my lifetime the new football facility ranks near the top on a short list of extraordinary Gopher news.   

Nothing surpasses the 1960 achievement of Minnesota’s last national championship.  When the Gophers played in back-to-back Rose bowls in 1961 and 1962, college football hysteria peaked in this town.  The Gophers split those two games, losing to Washington in 1961 but winning a revenge game the next year by beating and thoroughly dominating UCLA.   

The 1967 season was the school’s last as Big Ten champs.  Then the most excitement in the program came 15 years later when the Gophers moved off campus into the Metrodome.  The facility put the Gophers in the newest stadium in the Big Ten Conference and placed spectators in a weather protected environment (not to mention plastic seats with backs instead of the wooden planks in Memorial Stadium).   

In 1984, master coach and pitch man Lou Holtz took over as head coach.  Holtz created so much excitement and improvement in the program during his two years he still has Gophers fans wondering what kind of 10-year run Minnesota might have experienced if he had stayed here instead of leaving for Notre Dame.   

The earlier part of this decade showcased a running game ranking among the better ones in college football history.  Characterized by both total rushing yards and spectacular runs, the Gopher teams that included center and Outland Trophy winner Greg Eslinger and running backs Marion Barber III and Laurence Maroney provided hold-your-breath shows on Saturdays.   

Last week I made another entry in the best memories file after touring TCF Bank Stadium.  I hadn’t been inside the now all but completed stadium for about a year.  Many times during the last 12 months, though, I admired the gorgeous brick exterior and welcoming archway entrances with the names of Minnesota’s counties.  

Once inside, you hardly know where to look and what to admire next.  The planners (HOK Architects and U officials) have built a nearly $300 million stadium that seems like it should cost even more.  The grand designs like the stadium’s sightlines and intimacy are mission accomplished, but so, too, are the details.

 

 
Lou Holtz

 

The planners have built a nearly $300 million stadium that seems like it should  cost even more. 

Frequent Visits Reveal New Details 

“To be quite honest with you, every time I walk into that stadium I see a new detail,” Gophers coach Tim Brewster told Sports Headliners.  “I see something that catches my eye.  Something that makes you reflect upon the history. … Reconnecting with the championship history of the University of Minnesota.  And I truly believe that the missing link (in the program) is the stadium.” 

Details? A visitor saw block M’s embedded in the stadium’s water fountains.  In the premium seating areas cloth-covered chairs have the words to the school’s fight song, the “Minnesota Rouser.”   On field level workmen are placing the last bricks along the retaining walls.  A Hall of Fame and memorabilia elsewhere will preserve Minnesota’s football past.  

Fans will be able to move around in a concourse four times bigger than the Metrodome’s, according to Dan O’Brien, Brewster’s director of football operations.  And fans can spend their money on more than food and drink when they make their way into the stadium’s merchandise store, Goldy’s Locker Room. 

O’Brien said upper deck seats are only about 30 yards from the field and fans will watch one of the largest videoboards in college football.  It is located in the stadium’s open west end and looking that direction provides views of the downtown skyline. 

From the stadium’s higher levels the view of both downtown and campus is impressive.  Those views and the stadium’s beauty are expected to attract activities on non-game days including wedding events.

Most of the Big Ten stadiums were built more than 80 years ago.  Indiana’s Memorial Stadium opened in 1960 and was the conference’s newest on-campus facility until TCF Bank Stadium came along.   

How does Brewster believe the stadium will impact the branding of Gopher football? “It makes a loud statement that we’re committed at the University of Minnesota to playing great football, to having a great football program and it’s our responsibility as coaches and players to go out and do a great job of honoring who we are,” he answered. 

 

"It (TCF Bank Stadium) makes a loud statement that we're committed at the University of Minnesota to playing great football."
Tim Brewster
 

Brewster: Locker Room Best in America 

The Gophers’ locker room is shaped like a football. It measures 62 yards long and 32 yards wide.  O'Brien said the lighting system has 1,600 possible combinations, indicating the Gophers' post-game celebrations will be colorful and special.    

“We have without a doubt the finest home team locker room in America today,” Brewster said.  “Period.  I really believe that.” 

Among the features that he most appreciates is that there's no physical separation in the vast room.  No real corners, or partially obscured areas.  “We are out in the open and that’s how I want it,” Brewster said.  “Compartments within a locker room create cliques...We want no cliques. We want team.”     

More than 10 years ago I visited an athletic department official who vaguely talked about building an outdoor football stadium across from Williams and Mariucci arenas.  I dismissed the thought.  Brewster is grateful others didn’t and built this stadium where once it was only a passing thought. 

While Brewster’s goals are to win a Big Ten title and connect with Minnesota’s storied football past that includes five national championship teams, he’s not thinking about how TCF Bank Stadium impacts the dream of better days ahead.   “It’s not what it does for the dream,” he said. “It is the dream, and now it’s reality.  And that’s so exciting for the state of Minnesota.  For all our fans, for our players that the dream of football being back on campus in a beautiful venue has been realized. … Very few times in life does a dream, a vision, a thought, exceed your expectations.  This without question exceeds any and all expectations you could have had for it. It is amazing what they accomplished in building the stadium in taking every minute detail into consideration and making it happen.” 

Brewster was asked what he can envision saying to his players about the stadium in the days ahead.  The Gophers open practice on Monday.  A public scrimmage on August 22 for season ticket holders only will provide a TCF Bank Stadium preview before the grand opening on September 12, the first game in the facility and an event that will draw national coverage. 

Brewster said: “You know what? And it just jumps right out of my mouth. It’s such an honor and it’s such a privilege for us as coaches and for this football team to play in a stadium (like this), and understanding the magnitude of what it means. ...Honor every minute that we’re in that stadium.  And make certain that we do a great job of paying homage to those that were before us.”

 

Tim Brewster

 Dan O'Brien