The Big Ten continues its attempts to put in place plans for an imaginable winter football season, and some of those plans may simply be to play in dome-shaped stadiums. According to the Columbus Dispatch, the convention is lately contemplating several other domes, most of which serve as NFL stadiums, as places for games if the Big Ten can resume play in time for the winter months.
Potential venues come with Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, where the convention recently celebrates its annual championship game. Ford Field would also be considered in Detroit, the American bank stadium in Minneapolis and the Dome of the America’s Center in St. Louis, as would the Syracuse Dome. Without entering, Ohio state athletic director Gene Smith showed the firm that the Big Ten contemplates those “and others” sites.
For those other sites, the only other dome-shaped stadiums in the Big Ten geographic footprint are Miller Park in Milwaukee, UNI-Dome in Northern Iowa and Superior Dome in northern Michigan. It is also conceivable that the Big Ten considers outdoor stadiums to be its footprint, although this would possibly be much more complicated to achieve in the course of the trips.
Anyway, it’s clear that the Big Ten are looking to solve something. Shortly after the cancellation of the fall 2020 football season, Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren said the convention established a “working group” to establish a plan for winter or spring.
The news of the convention contemplating dome-shaped sites comes a week after reports were leaked that the Big Ten were contemplating a plan that would watch their season begin in early January and end well before the NFL draft. It is not far-fetched to think that this concept is gaining momentum if the convention is now looking for dome-shaped stadiums to play, because such a frame would be a greater need in January in the land of the Big Ten than in March or April.
However, selfishly, the concept of the big ten outdoors in January has some appeal to this weather-hardened Midwest.
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