You wake up. It’s game day. The adrenaline and excitement you have been feeling all week start to sharpen as you put on your favorite player’s jersey. You hop in the car with your friends, primed and ready for the game. Music is blasting, you and your friends predict the score and stats, and life couldn’t be better.
Then you get to the stadium, and the line just to get into the parking lot is a mile long and is not moving.
There goes all that excitement.
I recently attended the AFC Divisional matchup between the Houston Texans and the Kansas City Chiefs in Kansas City, Missouri, and this was my exact experience. It took an hour — which felt more like 50 hours — to get into the parking lot at Arrowhead Stadium. And once we did, it took us another 30 minutes or so to find a parking spot.
We finally found a place to park and immediately headed toward the stadium. The only way to get from the parking lot to the stadium was through an extremely narrow tunnel and set of stairs. Thousands of people were simutaneously trying to fit into this little tunnel, which added another 30 minutes to our trek to get inside the stadium.
As soon as we escaped the tunnel filled with Chiefs fans, we met our next obstacle: the lines to get into the stadium.
Actually, to describe what we experienced as lines would be mislabeling them. These were just groups of people all clustered together, hoping what they were standing in was a line. Another 30 minutes added to our trek.
Once we finally made it to our seats, the first quarter had already started, and the Chiefs were in the middle of their opening drive.
Jose Hernandez, a third-year student at the University of Iowa who joined me for this game, explained how the wait times impacted his experience.
“This was my first-ever NFL game, and my excitement was through the roof to see my favorite team. We left early in the morning to get to the stadium and be able to tailgate, another thing I had never experienced,” Hernandez said. “The lines to get into the parking lot took that away from me and set a negative tone right away.”
However, once I got into my seat and started to watch the game and appreciate how beautiful the stadium looked, my mood changed for the better.
Fans of the Chicago Cubs can probably relate.
They are a slightly above .500 team with no superstar names on the roster. Yet their home games consistently draw in large numbers of fans.
Why is this? Because Wrigley Field is the best sports stadium in the U.S. Part of the reason people go to Cubs games is just to be inside Wrigley Field and experience something they cannot anywhere else.
Last season, the Chicago Cubs averaged a home attendance of 35,922 people, which ranked sixth for attendance out of all the teams in the MLB, according to ESPN. Wrigley Field has a capacity of 41,649, which means that each game was at least near a sold-out crowd.
Here in Iowa City, we have Kinnick Stadium — the quintessential college football stadium. Kinnick has a capacity of 69,250. There are college football stadiums that exceed over 100,000 people, like Ohio State, Tennessee, and Alabama, but that could create more inconveniences than positives. Kinnick Stadium holds just enough people to create a lively and noisy college football experience while not holding too many people.
There are multiple parking lot options scattered around campus, which creates less traffic at the beginning and end of games. There is not just one giant parking lot where everybody is leaving all at once. This also allows for different tailgating locations, and every die-hard Iowa football fan loves to participate in a good tailgate.
Once inside Kinnick Stadium, you can partake in incredible traditions like the Hawkeye Wave after the first quarter and spelling out “Iowa” after every touchdown. All of these factors are what make going not just to an Iowa football game memorable but going to Kinnick Stadium iconic.
A high-quality and efficient stadium does so much for the viewing experience of fans going to watch their favorite team they might not even realize in the moment. Next time you go to a sporting event, take note of what each stadium does well to improve your overall experience.