5 O'Clock Shadow: Not-so-sweet home Chicago

Wed, 09/14/2011 - 2:56pm

News you can't leave work without:

College football is giving Soldier Field another try Saturday, which has Loren Tate's attention. His take:

Everybody keeps trying to “take Chicago” and nobody is winning. It’s a pro town, and college football only matters when Notre Dame is good. There are those of us who remember, in a bygone day, Chicago Tribune scribes in the UI press box with their radios tuned to the Notre Dame game while covering the Illini. That revealed all you needed to know.

Northwestern has the geographical edge but, for all the costly advertising and billboards, the Wildcats drew just 28,042 for Saturday’s 42-21 defeat of Eastern Illinois in Evanston.

Iowa was the last Big Ten team to play in the Bears’ playpen, beating Northern Illinois 16-3 in 2007. This week it is Wisconsin’s turn to try, coach Bret Bielema saying they used the Iowa contract as a guide for Saturday’s game with Northern Illinois at Soldier Field.
“This is a unique opportunity,” said Bielema, mindful that it is NIU’s home game ... but not really.

“We’re hoping for a great crowd for college football. We were concerned about the field conditions but we’re told the turf is solid. This gives our athletes a chance to play in a pro venue, and is easy driving distance for our fans.”

Illinois tried it in 1994, Lou Tepper’s last bowl team falling in the opener to Washington State, 10-9, in front of a Soldier’s Field crowd announced at 39,472. It had nowhere near the electric atmosphere of the UI-Northwestern game at Wrigley Field last season, and the Illini haven’t tried the Soldier Field experiment since.

Sections (5):5 O'Clock Shadow, Illini Sports, Football, Sports, Features

Categories (5):5 O'Clock Shadow, Illini Sports, Football, Features, Sports

Comments

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IlliniOllie wrote on September 14, 2011 at 3:09 pm

The Illinois-Washington State game was on a Thursday night, before Labor Day weekend, on the Bears' opening weekend, against a distant, small-market team that hadn't won a Pac-10 title in 32 years of membership.

Having a Soldier Field game shouldn't be ruled out just because the first one was Ron Guenther's (first) Folly. A competent AD who chooses the right opponent and schedules it intelligently (such as, I don't know, on a Saturday) could make the game into a success.

nolintaylor wrote on September 15, 2011 at 12:09 am

Hey 39,000 on a Thursday before Labor Day- Illinois can't even draw in 39,000 in Champaign on a Saturday-chalk that up to a victory we had as many in Chicago as we would at home.

Jam wrote on September 15, 2011 at 5:09 am

I believe that it can be proven that when Illinois wins its games at home that the crowd usually grows and fills the stadium. The disappointment over the years has grown when those home games became losses. Win at home and take your losses on the road is a sports adage as old as Loren. Win a few of the road games and then you are talking championships.

Ghost77 wrote on September 15, 2011 at 1:09 pm

You don't have to "take Chicago" to make it worth a marketing effort. If you have a good enough product and market effectively enough to make 10 percent of the alumni in the Chicago area want to come to games, and 1 percent of the non-alumni intrigued enough to try one game a year, you double attendance.

There is no reason to look at the Chicago area with an all or nothing approach. Marketing effectively enough to claim a small niche would make a big difference.

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