MSF writer Drew Lange has the distinction of having played football and basketball in both the Fargodome and the Alerus Center as a high schooler. He’s also an NDSU fan and alum. “I can say that I enjoy outdoor football. It is one of the reasons I love high school football. It is the way football should be played.”
“But,” he adds, “if I were in a position to choose whether the Bison abandon the Dome and go back outside, I don’t think I would do it.”
Determining exactly what impact a venue has on a team’s performance may be impossible, but UNI’s McDonough believes that the Dome gives the Panthers an edge in recruiting and a unique home-field advantage.
“UNI has won 180 games (80 percent winning percentage) since it opened in 1976,” he points out, adding that the Dome’s acoustics amplify crowd noise. “It is a huge recruiting tool on the FCS level—because there simply are not that many indoor facilities in the nation.” Indeed, prior to the Dome, UNI hadn’t won a conference championship in 12 years. Since the Dome opened, the Panthers have won a conference title more often than not.
“When the Bison take the field,” Lange says about NDSU at the Fargodome, “the lights go out, music plays, a montage shows up on the screens throughout the stadium, spotlights go up and the team runs out of an inflatable Bison helmet. You can’t do that outside in 20 degree weather. And obviously an enclosed stadium with 19,000 people in it is going to be louder than an open air field.”
Like McDonough, Lange also feels that playing indoors gives his school a recruiting edge over other FCS powers. “If you are a football player from Texas, which NDSU has a handful of, are you going to want to play your football inside in controlled weather on turf or outside in 20 degree weather on snowy grass? It is much more attractive to come to Fargo and play in that environment than to go to [Montana], at least it is to me.”
Josh Tinley is the author of Kneeling in the End Zone: Spiritual Lessons From the World of Sports . Follow him at twitter.com/joshtinley or send him an e-mail .
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