Ryan’s Rants

Last Friday night I made the trek to my hometown to see my younger brother strap on the varsity pads for the first time in a week one high school football opener. The night couldn't have been any more perfect. The temperature was in the mid to upper 70s with a slight breeze and a cloudless sky was looking upon us as the great Indians of Forest City High School contained a pesky Algona High School squad in a 15-7 opening week defensive battle. Much of the drive home was spent talking about great plays and hits that took place that night, but the focus of the conversation would always come back to how ideal the weather was.

It seemed like it took forever until the Cedar Falls exit appeared, and I could finally roll up the windows and turn the Lady Gaga radio remix down to a volume that stopped the bleeding in my ears (a last-ditch effort to stay awake). When I pulled onto University Avenue, the beauty of the night was quickly ruined by a giant black and white blob that sat atop the University of Northern Iowa campus. As most of you know, the UNI-Dome has been undergoing renovations to the roof that will cost around $4.5 million. If it was up to me, the domed roof would have been ripped off and we would go back to the way football should be played, outdoors!

Don't get me wrong, I love watching the Panther football team on Saturday afternoons. However, you are kidding yourself if you look forward to walking into a brightly-lit, fake-hot-dog-smelling dome in the middle of a cool fall afternoon. I wish we could one day construct a beautiful venue like some others in college football, such as the home of the Montana Grizzlies, the Rose Bowl and *cough* Kinnick Stadium *cough*.

I fully expect to get the random Dome supporter to come up to me after reading this article and say, "What about when it's freezing outside? Do you still wish we had an outdoor stadium?" To this question I would reply with a resounding "Yes!" Besides a beautiful fall afternoon, there is nothing I love better than wearing two sweatshirts, a coat, gloves, stocking hat and my beer sleeves while watching the football players smack each other on grass that has yard markers dug out under the snow.

The Dome gets under my skin the most every year when the high school football playoffs come to town. Ninety-nine percent of the high school teams that make the football finals are coming to play their first inside football game of the year. After weeks of playing games outside under the lights and on real grass, they are forced to come into a dome where the whole game changes.

Many fans have this same type of argument when talking about the other great sport on this planet, baseball. I am typing this article as I watch a Tampa Bay Rays team that is 30 games over .500 play in front of a crowd of 11,000. A team playing like that at this point in the season should be performing in front of 40,000 fans night in and night out. Unfortunately, no one wants to attend these games because they play in a stuffy dome.  Earlier this summer I decided I was going to go watch the Atlanta Braves play a series in Minneapolis. Last year, this would have been an easy ticket because I would be scalping outside the Metrodome. This year was different, however, because I had to sell my soul for tickets outside the newly-constructed outdoor Target Field.

I realize that this is a farfetched dream, that someday our Panthers will be playing their home games in an outside stadium. I hope that in the future I can wake up on Saturday mornings, wrap my kids in about five layers, and take them to Cedar Falls for a game while flurries are falling from the sky. Can you imagine how awesome it would be to see our future place kicker walk out onto the field with a game tied 21-21, three seconds on the game clock, at the end of regulation? I can already see his breath out of his facemask as he celebrates a game winning field goal that sails through the uprights to send the Panthers to the NCAA Championship game. I will avoid saying the dreaded name again, but think how different that night in southeastern Iowa would have been when the team who wears black and gold beat that other team from Pennsylvania in a controlled, fluorescently-lit dome? Outdoor football is a great thing people, something that needs to be brought back to the Cedar Valley. Be it a dome or outside, I will still leave you with the same parting message: go Panthers!