Why is Northwestern football playing in a temporary stadium? Ryan Field being demolished for new stadium

The pageantry and lore of college football is often a product of size.

College football stadiums are the largest athletic venues in the United States and are among some of the most colossal in the world, with 14 college stadiums having higher seating capacities than the biggest NFL venue.

For decades, the significance of a game is apparent before the ball is even kicked off, with television cameras panning over a sold-out stadium packed with tens of thousands of passionate fans dressed head-to-toe in their school’s colors.

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It’s what made last Saturday at Northwestern a bit jarring.

In the minutes leading up to the Wildcats’ 2024 season opener against Miami (Ohio), fans from across the country tuning into the matchup were treated to an unusual visual. Rather than a towering stadium that has stood for a century, Northwestern was preparing to play in a 12,000 -seat venue nestled on Lake Michigan.

As quaint and picturesque as the setup is, it’s fair to wonder how exactly the Wildcats ended up there. Why is a team from the Big Ten, a league with five schools with stadiums that hold at least 90,000 fans, playing on a field surrounded by temporary bleachers?

With Northwestern set to return to that same field Friday night against Duke, here’s what you need to know about why it’s playing in such a small, makeshift venue and how that temporary stadium came to be:

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Why is Northwestern football playing in a temporary stadium?

The Wildcats are playing in a temporary structure not out of desire, but necessity.

In September 2022, Northwestern announced that it would be tearing down Ryan Field, its home since 1926, and building a new stadium on the site, which is about one mile west of the school’s campus in Evanston, Illinois.

Demolition of Ryan Field started in February and has continued in the months since.

In its place will eventually be another Ryan Field — just one that bears little, if any, resemblance to the stadium it’s replacing.

With a price tag of $800 million, all of which is coming from private funds, the new Ryan Field will have a smaller seating capacity than its predecessor — 35,000, down from about 47,000 — but will have many of the modern amenities that the previous iteration, for all of its charm, lacked. The stadium will have a canopy designed to focus noise and light on the field, chair-back seats for every fan, high-tech scoreboards and concessions featuring food from local restaurants.

It's a significant step for the Northwestern program, which is coming off an 8-5 season under reigning Big Ten coach of the year David Braun.

Though the Wildcats’ future with a swanky new home is undeniably bright, their present isn't without some questions — namely, where would they play until the new stadium opened in a couple of years?

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Northwestern temporary football stadium

Located just outside Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city and home to teams in every major American professional sport, Northwestern would have seemingly had no shortage of options for an interim stadium.

Each possibility, however, posed challenges.

Soldier Field has a lengthy history of hosting college football games, but between the NFL’s Chicago Bears and the Chicago Fire of MLS, Northwestern would have had too many dates around which to schedule. Wrigley Field is relatively close to campus, only about 10 miles from the Ryan Field site, but the Wildcats couldn’t play there until November, after the World Series. Guaranteed Rate Field, home of the Chicago White Sox, presented the same issue, though it’s a bit of a humorous roadblock in hindsight, with the White Sox on pace to set the MLB modern-era single-season record for worst win percentage. SeatGeek Stadium, where the Chicago Red Stars of the NWSL play, had an appealing seating capacity of 28,000, but it was about 30 miles from campus in Bridgeview, Illinois, a drive that could be frustratingly long for athletes and students with Chicago traffic.

“Having that type of drive for the majority of our games wasn't good for anything,” Jesse Marks, Northwestern’s deputy director of athletics for development, said to USA TODAY.

“It's probably a three-hour gap from when the game would end to when they're back on campus, tailgating or hanging with their parents,” he added later.

The answer to their dilemma turned out to be right on campus.

Using its 2,000-seat soccer/lacrosse stadium as the playing surface and base, Northwestern leadership envisioned a temporary football structure rising from what had previously been a football practice field and a parking lot.

To make that dream a reality, the university enlisted the help of InProduction, a company that constructs temporary seating for Formula 1 races, golf tournaments and for various colleges like Hawai'I and Appalachian State. Perhaps its most famous work is the massive stadium that’s erected every year around the 16^th hole at the Waste Management Open golf tournament in Arizona.

Building a stadium virtually from scratch would require some creativity, especially given the limited space with which Northwestern had to work. The west side of the stadium backed up on the university’s field hockey stadium, leaving only so much room to put seating in. The same issue existed on the east side, which is separated from the lakeshore by only a trail and some green space.

Given those parameters, much of the seating is positioned behind the end zones. Students and the band are in the north end zone bleachers while the south grandstand, in addition to general admission seating, has two levels of suites. Oddly enough, the makeshift stadium, known officially as Northwestern Medicine Field at Martin Stadium, has more premium seating than Ryan Field did.

Though they don’t go nearly as far back, there are stands on both the east and west sides of the field. The back of the east bleachers is only about 50 feet from the edge of Lake Michigan, meaning that a punt could very well end up in the lake with a well-timed gust of wind.

The Walter Athletics Center — Northwestern’s glitzy $270 million football practice facility, which is conveniently across the street from Martin Stadium — is being used for locker room space and as a facility for game-day operations.

Perhaps most impressively, the stadium was put together in only about 60 days. As part of the financing to get it built, Northwestern received "a major six-figure commitment" from Braun and his family.

At less than one-third the size of Ryan Field, Martin Stadium is by far the smallest stadium in the Big Ten, more than 38,000 seats behind the next-closest venue, Minnesota’s Huntington Bank Stadium. For a smaller school whose fan base grew accustomed to seeing opposing fans from larger, more powerful programs like Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State take over Ryan Field, the more intimate setting for the next couple of years could provide the Wildcats with a much-needed home-field advantage.

Northwestern has five home games at Martin Stadium this season, including Big Ten contests against Wisconsin and Indiana. Its home matchups against Ohio State and Illinois — both of which are in November, after the Chicago Cubs’ season is over — will be held at Wrigley Field.

Northwestern Medicine Field at Martin Stadium capacity

As of now, Northwestern Medicine Field at Martin Stadium has an official capacity of 12,023, according to the university. There is, however, the potential to add more seating at a later time.

When does Northwestern’s new stadium open?

The new Ryan Field is scheduled to open in 2026.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why is Northwestern football playing in a temporary stadium?