$480 million Ryan Family gift becomes the $875 million Ryan Field, opening a Century to the day
When Northwestern runs out of the tunnel against Penn State, it will be in a stadium built on one family’s gift, five years of work, and an unusual idea of what college football should feel like.
The new Ryan Field in Evanston cost $875 million and was privately funded.
It is the most expensive college football stadium.
It is also, on purpose, the smallest in the Big Ten.
The project began with Patrick G. Ryan, the insurance executive who graduated from Northwestern in 1959 and chaired its board of trustees for 14 years.
He went to the university with an offer to help pay for a completely new stadium instead of a renovation.
A year later, he and his wife, Shirley Welsh Ryan, a 1961 graduate, made a $480 million gift, the largest single gift in Northwestern’s history.
It closed the university’s $6 billion “We Will” campaign.
The money was split between athletics and five biomedical research programs at the Feinberg School of Medicine.
“Advancing scientific discovery, especially in human health, has been a longstanding priority for our family,” Shirley Ryan said when the gift was announced.
As planning went on, the stadium got more expensive.
Northwestern had expected to spend about $300 million renovating the old stadium. Building a new one was first priced at $830 million.
The elder Ryan agreed to cover most of that gap.
The family, which also owns 22.5% of the Chicago Bears, left the day-to-day work to his son, Pat Ryan Jr., who holds a law degree and an MBA from Northwestern.
A technology entrepreneur with no background in architecture or construction, he leads Ryan Sports Development.
He was at the construction site almost every day, commuting from Wrigleyville to Evanston in a yellow safety vest and hiking boots.
By his own estimate he has led well over 100 tours for the media.
In May, ownership of the stadium passed to Ryan Field Foundation LLC, a company wholly owned by the university.
He chairs its board, and his brother Rob is a member.
His main design bet was to cut seats so the remaining ones sit closer to the field. The old stadium, which opened in 1926 as Dyche Stadium and was renamed Ryan Field in 1997, held about 47,500 people.
The new one holds 35,000, even though the building is more than half a million square feet larger. The upper deck is cantilevered so it hangs out over the lower seats. The farthest seat on the home side is 136 feet from the sideline, compared with about 235 feet at a traditional stadium like Michigan’s or Notre Dame’s.
“The worst seat in this stadium is better than 80% of the seats in most college football stadiums,” Ryan Jr. said this week.
He has also admitted the approach is a gamble. If it works, he said, “You’ll see echoes of it in some other buildings over time.
And if we’re wrong, well, we’ll have a one-of-a-kind stadium because no one will ever do it again.”
The details show what the family and university fans wanted to experience.
There are no bleachers.
Every seat is a chair with armrests and a cup holder, under a canopy roof that shelters fans and keeps crowd noise on the field. Northwestern has the smallest student body in the Big Ten, just over 8,000 students, and has averaged about 1,500 students per game in recent years.
To make up for that, the south end zone has a standing section called the Wildcat Wall, modeled on European soccer stadiums. Its 2,000 student spots for the opener sold out in two hours.
The food goes beyond standard stadium fare. “The Great Chicago Food Festival” has stands from Rick Bayless, Stephanie Izard, Gibsons, and Publican Quality Meats, along with Al’s Italian beef, Garrett’s popcorn, and a $5 menu of hot dogs, burgers, and soda.
“We’re really in the experiences business,” Ryan Jr. said. “No one goes to a football game, concert, or soccer match alone.”
Coach David Braun has been looking forward to this night for a long time. “This is transformational for the university and for the football program,” he said Monday, calling the opener a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
He thinks the closeness will help his team.
“Standing at midfield, you almost feel like you can reach out and touch the stands,” he said. He also sees the stadium as a recruiting message: “Northwestern is serious about this. They’re not messing around.”
The building is finally ready after nearly three years of waiting. Northwestern played its last game at the old stadium on Nov. 18, 2023, a 23-15 win over Purdue.
Demolition began in February 2024, and crews broke ground that June. For two seasons, the Wildcats played at a temporary lakefront stadium and at Wrigley Field. They arrive at 2-1 after wins over South Dakota State and Colorado and a 29-23 loss at Indiana, the defending national champion.
Penn State comes in at 3-1 under first-year coach Matt Campbell, and both teams are looking for their first Big Ten win. The university says the opener is sold out.
The stadium’s future depends partly on its neighbors in Evanston. In 2023, the city council approved up to six concerts a year at the stadium, starting in 2027, a decision some nearby residents opposed.
Professional soccer’s Chicago Stars applied this year to play at Ryan Field, but withdrew in March. They cited Northwestern’s wish to open the stadium in phases “out of consideration for its neighbors.”
The Stars have not said where they will play after this season. For now, the Ryans are calling it a year-round community space, with parks, plazas, and festival grounds meant to be busy even when there is no game.
The Penn State game falls exactly 100 years after the original stadium opened on Oct. 2, 1926, on the same land at 1501 Central St.
The gift that started the project was split between football and medical research.
The stadium it paid for is Patrick and Shirley Ryan’s biggest bet yet on the university where they met as students.