For the first time ever, I attended a college football game at Northern Illinois. NIU is the third Division I football team in the Chicago area. The closest is Northwestern University; the most famous the University of Notre Dame and then you have Northern Illinois University.<\/p>\n
The only reason I attended was because the game fell on a Thursday night. Northern Illinois had two games scheduled for Thursday nights this season. The first was last Thursday, November 5 vs. Eastern Michigan. However, that game started at 6:30 pm and Nicole and I had dinner plans. Last night\u2019s game started at 5:00 pm (a much better start time when dealing with Chicago traffic) and we had no plans since Nicole was not even going to be home. I left our house by Wrigley Field at 3:15 pm and arrived just in time for the 5:00 pm kickoff after dealing with traffic.<\/p>\n
Parking and Tickets<\/u>
One of my concerns with arriving at a game close to or at kickoff is that anyone who would give away a free ticket will already have entered the stadium. Also, it could be more difficult to find close parking.<\/p>\n
Neither was the case at Northern Illinois. For parking I pulled into a parking lot (which I believe was Lot C) about one block from the stadium. There was no attendant on duty and I did not have to pay. I\u2019m assuming people paid for this lot since most cars had a \u201cLot C\u201d parking pass dangling from their rearview mirrors and other parking lots that I passed on W. Lincoln Highway were charging $10 or $15.<\/p>\n
Next up was finding a ticket. As I expected there were no ticket scalpers, since tickets to see Northern Illinois football were only $20. Before buying a ticket from the box office, I waited a few minutes to see if any fan had an extra. After about five minutes, I overheard a couple guys talking about their extra tickets and asked if they had an extra ticket. They did and handed me one ticket for free.<\/p>\n
Huskie Stadium The Game<\/u>
<\/u>Huskie Stadium was surprisingly nice and is the sixth largest team venue in Illinois. There are three motor speedways and a horse race track in Illinois that are bigger making Huskie Stadium #10 overall according to worldstadiums.com<\/a>. The stadium has a strange way for the fans to enter. Fans walk into a main gate than must loop around ramps to get to their area of the section rather than having everyone enter through the same section entrance.<\/p>\n
Ball St. struck early to take a 7-0 lead but Northern Illinois took over and won 26-20.<\/p>\n