Northwestern is entering the 2025 season with low expectations on the field.
Chicago’s Big Ten team had little to shout about last time around, as the Wildcats posted a 4-8 record that saw them finish in the bottom three of the conference standings.
But while they have struggled to find on-field success in recent years, having last won the West Division five years ago and contested just one Bowl game since, Northwestern is trying to set college football‘s standard for the modern-day stadium.
The Wildcats first moved in to Ryan Field nearly a century ago in 1927, but their iconic home was demolished in early 2024 to make way for a state-of-the-art new stadium.
Set to cost a staggering $862 million, the upgraded site in Evanston, Illinois, will create a world-class home for Northwestern University Athletics.
The school hopes that when it’s complete, the new stadium will also offer a best-in-the-nation football experience for fans, student-athletes and the local community.
Proposals, first shared three years ago, confirmed that the new Ryan Field will feature significantly smaller crowds — with the arena designed for a maximum capacity of 35,000.
That would mean cutting 12,000 seats from what was already the smallest stadium in the Big Ten, but in doing so, the new venue will be able to offer a much improved fan experience.
A state-of-the-art canopy is designed to focus noise and light on the field, while the building as a whole will offer ‘the best sight lines’ in college football.
There will be an ‘innovative student section’ modeled on other sports, while the new Ryan Field will also make use of cutting-edge technology and scoreboards, and offer upgraded concessions featuring food from local restaurants.
Northwestern have also pledged that the stadium will be funded entirely with private dollars, and will require no taxpayer financing thanks to a ‘generous gift’ from the Ryan Family.
Billionaire Pat Ryan is a member and former chairman of the board of trustees at Northwestern, and Ryan Field is already named after him.
The insurance businessman also owns a large minority interest in the Chicago Bears, who have similarly been linked with a new stadium.
“Our worst seat in this stadium is 100 feet closer to the field than the most expensive seat at the Big House,” Ryan said last year, referring to 107,000-seater Michigan Stadium.
“You’re building things up and cantilevering them over instead of going out. It’s structurally much more challenging from an engineering perspective, but you’ve got to create better-than-TV sightlines.”
While the Ryan family donated $480m to the funding of the new stadium in 2021, in the year since the groundbreaking, the budget is now at $862m, which is $6m more than the original allocation for the stadium.
The cost is still fully funded by private backers, but by the time the new Ryan Field is completed, it is expected to be the most expensive college stadium in the country.
A budget of $862m would dwarf that of Texas A&M’s Kyle Field ($650.4m), Notre Dame Stadium ($527.4m) and the University of California, Berkeley’s California Memorial Stadium ($466.2m) — the current top three according to Front Office Sports.
The new Ryan Field is projected to open in September 2026, and new photos show the progress that has been made in the year since groundbreaking.
Northwestern’s new era is taking shape, and steel beams now outline the upper bowl, while the interior levels are filling out to provide a clearer vision of the expansive sightlines all around the stadium.
Early stages of construction saw crews excavate more than 300,000 cubic yards of soil to lower the field to its below-ground depth.
Once the frame is complete, the 35,000-seat facility will have used approximately 12,000 tons of steel.
In the coming months, as the top of the bowl is completed, crews will begin work on the canopy, which is hoped to provide an ‘intense and immersive experience’ for fans and players alike.
When completed, Ryan Field will market itself as the first NFL-style stadium at college level, which will be able to serve the Wildcats for decades to come.