Breaking Ground
October 18th, 2006
By Archived Story
Nov. 21, 1981 marked the last Golden Gopher football game played on campus grass. The Gophers led in the fourth quarter only to fall to border-rival Wisconsin 26-21 at Memorial Stadium.
A year passed, and the home team moved off-campus to the newly-built Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis. Ten years passed, and empty lots replaced an aged athletic amphitheater. Home field advantage became a memory.
Nearly twenty-five years later and with Stadium Village a little quieter, the groundbreaking of the new TCF Bank Stadium on Sept. 30 brought football fever on an unseasonably warm afternoon.
U of M supporters walked, the band marched, and Goldy scootered onto the flat parking lot at Oak and 4th S.E. that, by the start of the 2009 football season, will be the foundation for a 50,000-seat, open-air stadium. Fans carried signs and wore jerseys of Gopher running backs, while others wore gold “Back to Campus 2009” T-shirts. Former players and coaches were in attendance, including Bob McNamara, the last coach to bring the Gophers to the Rose Bowl. Tyrone Carter, a free safety for the Super Bowl Champion Pittsburgh Steelers, also made an appearance.
Amidst the smattering of maroon and gold walked three University of Michigan students who watched the festivities from afar. Proudly donning their yellow and blue school colors, the students couldn’t help being noticed by Gophers young and old.
When the students, who said they travel to every Michigan away game, were asked why they would want to attend a groundbreaking ceremony for a school not their own, they simply remarked, “We get to go to a stadium that doesn’t exist yet.”
University President Bob Bruininks stepped to the stage and, in the fashion of Monday Night Football, asked the crowd, “Are you ready for football?” Bruininks addressed the expansion of the university, the Driven to Discover campaign, and reiterated his longtime dream of bringing Gopher football “back to the University campus where it belongs.”
The Gopher home won’t come cheap – the stadium’s construction costs will run up to an estimated $248 million.
The University will be responsible for raising 45 percent, or about $112 million, of the costs. $35 million of that will come from a corporate sponsorship with Wayzata-based TCF Bank. The remaining 55 percent of funding will come from the state of Minnesota. Additional support will come from Best Buy, Target Corporation, General Mills, Federated Insurance and Norwest.
Athletics Director Joel Maturi stepped up next and announced that there had been a possibility of the Oct. 7 home game against Penn State being moved to late November due to conflicts with a Minnesota Twins playoff game. Maturi related the scheduling conflict to a game versus University of Michigan three years prior when the two teams were forced to play on a Friday night instead of a Saturday. Maturi said he was later asked by University of Michigan Athletic Director William Martin what it would take to bring a stadium to campus. The response: money. And on Oct. 9, 2003, Maturi said that Martin proceeded in giving him a $100 check for the stadium.
Gophers football coach Glen Mason, who followed Maturi at the podium, quipped in reminding Maturi to not waste any time depositing Martin’s check. “Make sure it doesn’t bounce. He is from Michigan, you know.” Mason, in a slick black suit, boomed over the loudspeakers as he explained what was missing from the university. “We’ve got a beautiful campus, we’ve got a great faculty, we’ve got great students, we’ve got a great band, we’ve got great alumni,” Mason said. “But we didn’t have a damn stadium.”
In June, University officials announced a local firm, Architectural Alliance, will work with HOK Sport, whose design portfolio includes stadiums for the Pittsburgh Steelers, New England Patriots, and Arizona Cardinals of the National Football League, to build the stadium.
On this day, university and corporate officials put on yellow hardhats and took hand in shoveling a mound of dirt. And although the home team would come up short against Michigan later that night, Gopher fans look forward to taking back the home field advantage.
