Stadium Report Cards: TCF Bank Stadium

Our friend TC comes through for us!

Team: Minnesota Golden Gophers Football
Location: Minneapolis, MN
League: Big Ten
Built: 2009
Capacity: 50,805
My event: Regular season game, vs Southern California

1. Outdoor Design

It's beautiful. The brick exterior matches both the basketball and hockey arenas which are right next to TCF Bank Stadium. The only thing I wish they did was use gold lettering like they do on other venues.
9/10

2. Indoor Design

The inside layout is nice as well. I like how the seats are maroon and gold and spell out "MINNESOTA" on both sides. The stadium is in the shape of a horseshoe, and at the "top" of the horseshoe there's a charming little plaza with some shrubs and things, it's also where the main scoreboard resides.
8/10

3. Prices
The prices are a little on the expensive side, if you ask me. We sat in the upper level and the tickets were $60, which is at the most pretty fair. But $5 footlongs cost $10 there, so you tell me if that's right
6/10

4. Food
The food is just regular stuff. I had a brat and kraut, which was tasty.
8/10

5. Staff
The staff was really, really nice. Everyone was really helpful and friendly. There's this museum area that you need to show your ticket to enter and exit, and my friend didn't have his but they let him in anyway.
9/10

6. Cleanliness
It rained the previous night, so the ground around the seats had some puddles. Other than that everything was clean as a whistle, like every stadium should be.
8/10

7. Parking
There are lots surrounding the stadium, but they seemed like a pain to get into. The traffic is horrible so getting out was also a struggle.
4/10

8. Atmosphere
Sports Illustrated put free magazines in everyone's seats, so after every touchdown people would toss them in the air and it was raining SI's. That was pretty cool. But other than that no one was really into it during the 4th quarter when the Gophers were done for.
6/10

9. Playing Surface.

The field is turf, and it looks pretty good compared to the condition of other turf fields. They outline the numbers in maroon, which I like, the rest of the field was pretty standard.
8/10

10. Scoreboard

This thing is awesome! It's one of the largest in college football, I think in the top 5. There's also a smaller one on the other side of the field, which has closed captioning.
10/10

That is a 76/100 which is pretty good. The aesthetics like parking brought it down.