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Photographs by Byron Kerman
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It's been called it “trippy,” “ugly,” “obnoxious,” “hideous,” and, in a fit of pique that just seemed comical, “an abomination to the game." Those words come from the nation’s college-football scribes, and it is the nearly completed football stadium at Lindenwood University’s Belleville, Ill. campus.
The school’s football program, in its maiden year, will burst onto the scene at its September 1 home opener on a football field striped in maroon and gray. It is different. It is bold. And if you are willing to wait a little while for your eyes to adjust, it might just be fun. (It’s also one heck of a home-field advantage.)
Maroon and gray are the school’s colors, and the colors of its sports teams, the Lindenwood Lynx (and its mascot, Elwood the Lynx). The only other football field in the nation to attempt a striped pattern this garish, experts say, is that of the University of Central Arkansas.
Viewing the Lindenwood-Belleville field up close is certainly a shocker at first, but really, the weirdness fades pretty promptly. Installing a field in these colors may have been something of a stunt, but in the end, some birds just have brighter plumage than others, if you will. There’s no reason to be offended, unless you’re some kind of overzealous football purist with a goalpost up your butt. Some of us think it’s pretty punk rock, so to speak, and we’re happy to screw with the nattering nabobs of normality.
