Northwestern's new Ryan Field Stadium on track toward October opening

A new era for Northwestern football is set to begin this fall, when its new state-of-the-art stadium opens.

It's a build that's been about five years in the making.

Pat Ryan Jr., the CEO of Ryan Sports Development, says on any given day, about 1,100 people are working to get the new Ryan Field ready to debut on Oct. 2, exactly 100 years after Northwestern Stadium opened in the same spot.

These are 100-year decisions; the last made decision 100 years ago. You have a 100-year decision, you know, you want to be right," he said. "You can't future-proof it, but how do you design something that will be great today and continue to be great over time? You know, you inspired to be iconic, not outdated."

A lot of the work to make the new stadium iconic has already been completed or is well in progress, from the giant video board to the loads of food and drink options, to the newly rolled out field turf, and even a giant canopy covering all the seats, all of which are actually seats, not bleachers.

"Everybody has a comfortable seat. Everybody in the whole place has comfortable seating. Everybody has a seat, everybody has armrests, everyone has a cupholder, everyone has access to premium concessions, everyone has access to pregame festival ... so this idea for premium for everyone, it only makes sense," Ryan said. 

Something Ryan is really proud of in the project is the stadium's openness—meaning no matter where you're sitting, you'll feel like you're close to the action—thanks to a concept he called death of the nosebleed, eliminating seats he says are expensive to build but provide less customer satisfaction.

"What we did is we made two afirm new choices," Ryan said. "One, we reduce the capacity, and the second thing is we invested in the engineering structure steel. It's more expensive to go forward because it puts more weight on the forward foot, but by doing that it allowed us to give every seat a better than TV view."

And that "better than TV" view is what he hopes brings fans to the new Ryan Field for many years to come, and maybe has other stadiums playing a bit of copycat as well.

"If we're right, you'll see echoes of it at other buildings, and if we're wrong, then we are one of a kind," he said.