Excuse me, I meant to say, "I was at the last ever mens' State basketball game held at Reynolds." The womens' basketball team still plays their games there.
Cole Field House at Maryland was wild back in the day, though it pains me to say Cameron Indoor Stadium is probably more intimidating (plus Coach K has the thermostat set to 95 degrees). Supposedly the new Terps venue, Comcast Center, was designed to be intimidating, with steeply pitched seating behind the baskets and a student section that rings the floor. Haven't been there, though I doubt it's seriously intimidating like any of these football stadia. Speaking of football (gridiron) and "back in the day," RFK stadium was absolutely bonkers for Redskins home games. A dual use stadium (actually, a three-sport stadium: for a long time RFK was one of the finest places in the world to watch and play football (soccer) and certainly the best in the States), the lower deck stands were built to retract for baseball, and when the crowd would jump, the whole side of the stadium seemed to throb. When the Skins scored, the whole stadium moving and thrumming from so many fans going Hog Wild would tickle the soles of your feet. But in order to be considered, it seems the fans have to be intimidating, too. While having criminally violent assholes for fans is obviously not a prerequisite, it seems to have helped some of those venues make the list.
The boys on the US men's soccer team don't seem to like playing in Mexico City too much, what with the altitude, choking air pollution, and hostile-as-hell fans. Can't imagine they're much nicer to anyone else.
The old Boston Garden was always a tough place for visitors, but only when the Bruins had a decent team. The seats were close to the ice, and the noise seemed to reverberate from the top down. One could tell what was happening on the ice, even from the conceession stands, just by the crowd noise.
He refers to Celtic as 'boys in green stripes'. What an idiot.
That's just like trying to compare teams or players from different eras. It's impossible and purely a waste of time, yes?
Refreshingly international. I've been to #1 to see Boca Jr. play arch-rival River Plate, and it was beyond words. Especially since I was rooting for River with my La Plata buddies. Insanely atmospheric, but felt perfectly safe -- that was in 1994 though.
A pretty limited range of sports and venues. And badly written. Most of you have summed up the problems with doing these sorts of comparisons anyway. But I'd add: Goroka Showground in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Great Britain played a Rugby League Test there a few years ago (they lost). The crowd dressed in the whole 'highland warrior' style (kumul feathers, penis gourds, bones in noses, that sort of thing), and the Royal PNG Constabulary had to come in and disperse the tribal fighting during the half time break. The second half was played in a fog of tear gas that often blinded the Great Britain players. Now that's intimidating!
On the one hand, if you're going to do a Sporting List Article, it's nice not to limit it to North American sports. On the other hand, it helps if it's well-written. I don't find fault with the top rankings: Boca and Galatasaray are teams you'd rather not play at their place. It's impossible and purely a waste of time, yes? Well, I suppose there are quantifiable elements: home/away records, records against teams that, on paper, you'd expect to win, etc. One thing you can tease from this piece: moving stadiums can lose the elements (tangible and intangible) that make it an intimidating away trip. The Dell may have helped Southampton stay in the top league longer than their form deserved; Arsenal didn't necessarily need the advantages of Highbury (tight, tight ground, narrow touchlines) but they made use of it. Lastly: LSU have an actual tiger on campus? 'kin'ell.
Lastly: LSU have an actual tiger on campus? 'kin'ell. I got a kick out of this write-up on the LSU football experience by a Florida fan after the LSU-Florida game earlier this year. Some excerpts:
The tiger is real. You know that there's a live tiger on campus at LSU. And that they parade it around before games. And that you're going to see it. But seeing it registers the lunacy of the whole event at a level that only the visual can really deliver: it's a live goddamn tiger in its own bizarre cage/car, staring out at all the fresh meat it could possibly ever want from behind mesh and generally looking very, very unimpressed with the whole affair. The crowd loses all sense when it arrives, bringing LSU pregame out of the realm of mere "pep" and into a conflation of sport and primitive totem worship. [. . . ] Tiger Stadium is proxy Mardi Gras. Something cuts Tiger Stadium loose from the fetters of reality. Perhaps it's the brown liquor buzz peaking with the setting of the sun, or the lurid dark purple the sky turns just as the sun is sliding beneath the horizon, or the combined and complete attention of 92,000 people all focused on one communal point of attention. We've read about the intangibles of playing in a place like Tiger Stadium beforethe vague "something" described alternately as "special," "different," or "MY GOD I'M NOT GETTING OUT OF HERE ALIVE"and scoffed.
