Latest / Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning / Ohio State Football Playing At Wrigley Field

Transcript

Ohio State Football Playing At Wrigley Field · Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning

• 0:00
  Welcome to buck Eyes tomorrow morning for Thursday, February twenty second. I'm your
• 0:03
  host, tom Or. The Akron game is in one hundred and ninety one
• 0:06
  days, the game against Michigan in two hundred and eighty two days. The
• 0:10
  Northwestern game that's going to be in Let me do some quick math. I
• 0:13
  think that's two weeks before the Michigan game, so that'd be two hundred and
• 0:19
  sixty eight days. And why are we talking about the Northwestern game? Well,
• 0:23
  it's because of where the Northwestern game is going to be played. There
• 0:27
  is some news on that front. It is pretty exciting news. Always exciting
• 0:32
  to have Kevin Newton of bucke Huddle dot com joining me Keaven. According to
• 0:36
  a report from the Wildcat Report, the Northwestern rival site, you and I
• 0:41
  and Tony Gerderman and probably a whole bunch of other Ohios, Tate fans are
• 0:44
  going to get to go watch a football game in Wrigley Field this fall.
• 0:49
  Well, we know they won't be using it much for baseball as it is,
• 0:52
  at least at least postseason baseball, but this would be beyond the World
• 0:56
  Series anyway. But yeah, with Ryan Field being torn down and undergoing an
• 1:00
  eight hundred million dollar rebuild, facelift, what have you. Northwestern has been
• 1:07
  left looking for venues to host its twenty twenty four season and a little bit
• 1:12
  beyond. And you know, there's been a lot of speculation over on the
• 1:17
  huddle board between us and some of the posters whether or not that might be
• 1:19
  Soldier Field, Wrigley Field, where it might be With this Wildcat report report,
• 1:26
  I guess of it being at Wrigley That is something I guess of.
• 1:32
  Ohio State's never going to the Pin Stripe Bowl, then you need to find
• 1:36
  a way to play it at a at a baseball venue at some point,
• 1:38
  just to cross that off the bucket list. Yeah. I don't think Ohio
• 1:42
  State's going to reach the Finway Bowl or the Pin Stripe Bull at any point,
• 1:46
  so this is probably the next best thing. And this has kind of
• 1:49
  been a weird process and Northwestern is still sort of figuring this stuff out,
• 1:53
  and these games are not that far away. The start of the season again
• 1:57
  is in one hundred and ninety one days. To get this stuff figured out
• 2:00
  pretty quickly. This kind of all came to light just a week ago when
• 2:05
  the Chicago Tribune put out an article, Hey, they're tearing down Ryan Field,
• 2:07
  which I think people had maybe heard that that was going to be happening
• 2:10
  at some point maybe, but there was a bunch of approvals that needed to
• 2:14
  go through. Well apparently at some point with when no one was looking,
• 2:16
  all the approvals went through and they started tearing down the stadium. And the
• 2:20
  question was, Okay, where are they going to play? And the answer,
• 2:23
  according to the Chicago Tribune less than a week ago, was yon.
• 2:28
  There were no definitive dates. There were no definitive anything. There are a
• 2:30
  bunch of knit places being sort of discussed. It sounds like, according to
• 2:34
  the Wildcat Report story, they might play Wisconsin up in lambeau Field. That
• 2:38
  would be pretty cool. They're looking at there's the MLS Stadium in Chicago,
• 2:42
  There's Regular Field they might play some in, and the Soldier Field, the
• 2:46
  home of the Bears. Maybe even the White Sox Stadium that's a possibility as
• 2:50
  well. They are really just figuring this stuff out. But according to the
• 2:53
  story I'm going to read directly from that Wildcat Report story right now, the
• 2:55
  Wildcats will play Indiana on October fifth at Seat Peek, which is the MLA
• 3:00
  Stadium probably don't need to worry about selling that one out. With Indiana coming
• 3:04
  to town and host Ohio State at Rigley Field on November fourteenth, the rest
• 3:07
  of the slate is still up in the air. Northwestern Athletics issued the following
• 3:12
  statement when we requested comment about the venues for the twenty twenty four Steyt home
• 3:14
  games. Quote, Northwestern are still exploring options for where the team will play
• 3:17
  next season. At this time, contracts with venues are still being finalized,
• 3:22
  and we'll share information with you as soon as possible. So it's not official
• 3:24
  official, but it feels official enough that Okay, I wasn't sure. You
• 3:30
  know, a week ago, you sort of heard about Wrigley but it didn't
• 3:34
  sound like it was final. Final. This seems a little closer to final.
• 3:38
  I think it's maybe officially okay to get a little bit excited. This
• 3:42
  feels like this is going to be a game between the what this Ohio State
• 3:46
  team could be this year and the rarity of the you know, the opportunity
• 3:51
  to play in an iconic venue like Wrigley Field. This feels like this could
• 3:54
  be a very, very very hot ticket for Ohio State fans. And let's
• 4:00
  not forget Ohio State only has the four road games this year, having all
• 4:03
  three of its non conference games at home, and then with the way Big
• 4:05
  Ten scheduling is, you're either five and four home or five and four road,
• 4:10
  and Ohio State is five and four home, so four roadies and one
• 4:14
  of them is going to be this one in Ohio State certainly has a huge
• 4:17
  alumni base in the Chicagoland area, and a lot of times fans just find
• 4:25
  it easier to travel to a game, maybe more so than even going to
• 4:29
  Ohio Stadium, just because either they want to go see somewhere else or they
• 4:33
  just are shut out of tickets or things like that nature. I just wonder
• 4:39
  where all the Northwestern press are going to sit, because with baseball press boxes
• 4:43
  and the size of Ohio State's media traveling media contingent, I don't know where
• 4:46
  everybody else is going to sit. And just to add insult to injury,
• 4:50
  apparently I was talking to Louis Vicerr, the author of this article, shortly
• 4:55
  before we recorded this. I guess this is Northwestern's homecoming game, so nothing
• 5:00
  like scheduling an easy one for homecoming. But yeah, this is going to
• 5:04
  be one of these things that just kind of stands out as a one off
• 5:10
  because you don't have these types of opportunities all that often, so it will
• 5:15
  end up being a hot ticket. And once we were done recording this,
• 5:19
  I'm going to have to change our hotel reservation from out at O'Hare to something
• 5:24
  more centrally located because I hadn't even thought about the fact that Ryan Field wasn't
• 5:29
  going to be there when I booked hotels two months ago. Yeah, that's
• 5:32
  I think a lot of people may be changing travel plans, you know,
• 5:36
  as soon as they hear this news, and or making travel plans as soon
• 5:40
  as they hear this news. I mean, Wrigley Field is obviously one of
• 5:44
  the most iconic venues in North American sports. I mean you think about the
• 5:48
  old stadiums, the really iconic stadiums, it's really Wrigley Field and Fenway Park
• 5:53
  at this point. Dodger Stadium, I think, is the third oldest stadium
• 5:57
  in Major League Baseball, and that's from thenineteen sixties. Have you been to
• 6:01
  a game at Wrigley Because I have been to a game. I've been in
• 6:04
  multiple games at Wrigley. It's one of those places where it's just it's cool
• 6:08
  to be there and look around and go, oh, yeah, hey,
• 6:10
  this is the place that you've seen on TV for a million years. Yeah.
• 6:14
  No, I've seen multiple games that at Wrigley. It's cool. It's
• 6:20
  cool and campy and dumpy and all of that together. And you've got the
• 6:25
  bars that are right there, you've got Cubby Bear and all these other places.
• 6:30
  There are obviously issues with playing a game in a baseball stadium, a
• 6:35
  game of football in a baseball stadium. I'm sure we'll talk about some of
• 6:39
  those here in a second. But but yeah, in terms of just what
• 6:44
  it is, it is pretty cool because I mean we're just talking about a
• 6:48
  cathedral of of of of sports in terms of just historically. Yeah, and
• 6:55
  so there are there, there are, There's a lot to be excited about.
• 6:58
  There are some challenges that are going to with this. Let's start with
• 7:01
  the before the game. This is my personal advice to you. Leave your
• 7:05
  car at home, leave your car at your hotel. Take the train.
• 7:11
  Please. I am absolutely begging you. Take the train. I believe it's
• 7:14
  the red line that goes up there. Take the train. Brown. We'll
• 7:18
  get you there too. Parking will cost eleventy three dollars. Take the train.
• 7:24
  I am absolutely beseeching you take the train. You don't want to drive.
• 7:29
  You don't want to drive. The area around Wrigley Field if you have
• 7:31
  not been there for a while. I was at a game there in like
• 7:34
  two thousand and two thousand and one, and then was there again for a
• 7:38
  game last year or two years ago. And the area around the ballpark very
• 7:44
  very new there. It's all getting built up. It's one of those kind
• 7:46
  of ballpark village type areas where the company that owns it has been dumping millions
• 7:53
  and millions and millions and millions of dollars in there, so it may look
• 7:55
  a little different than the last time you saw it. So that's transit.
• 7:59
  That's sort of the area around ballpark, all right. Seating, So one
• 8:01
  of the areas Kevin where Wrigley Field is like, oh, look, it's
• 8:05
  charming, and there's the hand operated scoreboard and it's oh it's so it's so
• 8:09
  charming and old. The seats, some of the seats. You know,
• 8:13
  anytime you put a baseball a football game in a baseball stadium, you've got
• 8:16
  some weird seating stuff and it's you've got some tough places where it's kind of
• 8:20
  hard to see. There are places where the seats are facing the wrong direction,
• 8:26
  like your seat you sit down the left field line, and the seats
• 8:28
  are facing like center field instead of the pitcher's mound or the center of the
• 8:31
  diamond. So this is gonna be, you know, this is gonna be
• 8:37
  a real weird setup. I'm sure it's gonna be. I'm sure there's gonna
• 8:39
  be a lot of you know, not great seats there, and it's gonna
• 8:43
  be just like you've got to go and just sort of appreciate the venue and
• 8:46
  appreciate the environment and not sweat the the fact that it is not generally not
• 8:54
  super big, not super luxurious seats and not necessarily pointed in the right direction.
• 9:00
  There is a hand operated scoreboard there. There also is a JumboTron,
• 9:03
  and some people will be relegated to trying to watch the game on the JumboTron
• 9:09
  or mobile devices because yes, there are just going to be bad seats.
• 9:13
  I just it is what it is. There probably be some seats that they
• 9:16
  just can't you know, like just can't sell because they're just not going to
• 9:20
  work. It's sort of like when you play the Final four and some of
• 9:24
  these cathedrals and you have seats that are facing a bathroom, and it's just
• 9:28
  not it's just not going to work out. But yeah, you're you're going
• 9:33
  to be part of the experience. You're it's not going to be your best
• 9:39
  viewing experience. But if we're we're being honest, the best viewing experience is
• 9:43
  on your sofa, you know, watching it on a on a on a
• 9:46
  seventy inch television. So I think you've already kind of agreed to the contract
• 9:52
  of I'm giving something up by going to the game. I'm giving I'm giving
• 9:56
  up a great view, I'm giving up inexpensive beer, I'm saving up comfort.
• 10:01
  So all of that is going to kind of be there. But again,
• 10:05
  I've already had multiple people reach out to me today and it's like you
• 10:09
  got to beat on tickets for this, So I don't think it's going to
• 10:11
  be a tough sell. And to get back to your parking situation, there
• 10:15
  is a little parking there, but none of it. This isn't like a
• 10:18
  case of where like at Dodger Stadium there are lots there. There's like Nuts
• 10:22
  on Clark and some places like that that have parking lots. Where you leave
• 10:26
  your keys and then they back you in and everything, or they you don't
• 10:31
  even leave your keys, and then you're stuck because the person who has you
• 10:35
  blocked in is having a couple more beers at the Cubby Bear and you're just
• 10:39
  gonna have to wander around and wait for them. But we'll repeat again,
• 10:43
  take the train or get a hotel real close and walk. But if you
• 10:46
  get a hotel real close and walk, you should get a hotel like right
• 10:50
  now, like today, like maybe pause the podcast and get a hotel close
• 10:52
  before they jack the rates up if they have not done that already. So
• 10:56
  all right, So that's kind of the the big picture. Let's talk a
• 11:00
  little bit about the logistics just of the field itself, because this is again,
• 11:03
  this is a football game in a baseball stadium. This is not a
• 11:07
  stadium. It was built for football. Based on previous games, you're going
• 11:11
  to have some weird stuff with two teams on one sideline. But the good
• 11:15
  news, Kevin is in twenty ten, Northwestern played Illinois and they had to
• 11:18
  play with both teams going in the same direction, like one end zone was
• 11:22
  too close to the wall and they wouldn't let people go that direction. They've
• 11:26
  at least fixed that so you can use the whole football field. But still
• 11:28
  there are going to be some real quirks to this kind of this kind of
• 11:31
  event in a baseball stadium. Yeah, I'm not exactly sure how you play
• 11:37
  half court and have to check at the fifty yard line or anything like that,
• 11:41
  But yeah, I mean, at least that has been fixed, the
• 11:46
  being able to utilize the full hundred yards on offense as opposed to Okay,
• 11:50
  well you're just going to if you have to run back at defensive score,
• 11:54
  then you're just going to go into the danger zone. But then again,
• 11:58
  there's not a lot of room at Oklahoma State. I've been there for games.
• 12:01
  There's not a lot of room there. There's not a lot of room
• 12:03
  at at Nebraska. You have like those little on field suites that are right
• 12:07
  there. There's like a foot of room between the corner and the wall the
• 12:11
  holding wall for that. But having both teams on the on the on the
• 12:15
  same sideline is a look. So obviously there's gonna be some adjustments as to
• 12:20
  where your coaching boxes and everything else. So I'll be really interested in once
• 12:26
  this gets officially official. Even though the fact that my guy Louis has already
• 12:31
  reported it. I'm feeling it's pretty damn done. But once we really get
• 12:35
  to start seeing the logistics of how this is all going to work out,
• 12:39
  and they're going to be people that are going to have their concerns about it
• 12:43
  because it is it is not meant for this. I mean, sure,
• 12:46
  you know, playing on grasses, grass or whatever, but you don't have
• 12:52
  nearly the same type of room and certain spots and everything else. If there's
• 12:58
  a game to have a you know, to make sure that your running game
• 13:01
  is down, this is going to be the one. Let's not have guys
• 13:05
  running wild and and all sorts of craziness that can happen. Let's just keep
• 13:09
  it between the sidelines and get there because, as you said two weeks later,
• 13:13
  is Michigan. And while Michigan may be an eight and fourteen this year,
• 13:18
  you don't want, you don't want to do anything to level the playing
• 13:22
  field stupidly at regular Yeah, try not to leave any cartoon style cutouts and
• 13:26
  the brick wall in the outfield or anything like that, like running through.
• 13:31
  Don't do the like I'm gonna run down the tunnel thing. There is no
• 13:33
  tunnel there there's just a brick wall behind one of those end zones. Don't
• 13:35
  fall into the dugout. There's gonna be a lot of advice for folks going
• 13:39
  there. My best advice, please take the train. Consider buying tickets in
• 13:43
  the upper deck down the first base line. Those are probably going to be
• 13:46
  the best baseball view, baseball the based football view in that stadium. Anything
• 13:52
  down the first base line, based on the way they've typically laid that field
• 13:54
  out and especially higher up, is probably not going to be a bad idea.
• 14:01
  If you're in the upper deck, you're less likely to be behind a
• 14:03
  poll. Write this all down, kids, This is good advice. You're
• 14:05
  gonna spend a bunch of money, but it is going to be a very
• 14:09
  cool event. I am. Last time we were at Northwestern it was the
• 14:13
  windiest game I have ever seen. This will be one of the more memorable
• 14:16
  games in a very different way. I think when we were there for the
• 14:20
  Buckeyes in November at Wrigley Field against Northwestern, that should be a blast.
• 14:26
  Boy one. Just one more thing to look forward to about this year's Ohio
• 14:30
  State football team, this year's Ohio State football schedule. It should be a
• 14:33
  really, really fun fall, really really fun summer, really really fun spring
• 14:37
  we're heading into as the Buckeyes kickoff there at spring practice in just less than
• 14:43
  two weeks. We're getting there. So a great place to be for all
• 14:46
  of those fun things is at Buckey Huddle dot com. That's w Kevin,
• 14:48
  Tony and I cover the team, Mark covers recruiting. Got our whole team
• 14:52
  of ex's and o's guruz making you a smarter football fan all at Buckey Huddle
• 14:56
  dot com. Also make sure you're subscribe at YouTube dot com slash Buckey Huddle.
• 15:01
  We have lots of podcasts, lots of interviews, all that good stuff
• 15:03
  all in one place. YouTube dot com slash Buckeye Huddle. That will do
• 15:07
  it for today. Thank you guys all for joining us. Have a great
• 15:09
  day. We'll talk to you tomorrow.