As Nebraska looks ahead to the 2025 college football season, athletic director Troy Dannen revealed that Memorial Stadium is going to look very different. Not necessarily the facility itself, but the field.
The Cornhuskers are using a new design to intimidate its opponents. I am hesitant that this change will make even the slightest bit of difference but I guess we can’t know until we see the visiting teams run with fear back into the locker room because they are so scared of the colored paint.
Nebraska unveiled new end zones for its college football practice field earlier this month. They used to be colorless, so green because of the turf, up until the beginning of February. Now they are red.
Although it was a very minor change, the red paint got the fanbase all riled up. They wanted to see the same color scheme for Tom Osborne Field at Memorial Stadium. Dannen listened!
He recently announced during an interview with Husker Online that the practice field will be identical to the game field moving forward. The end zones at Memorial Stadium also used to be colorless (green).
📍 The loudest I’ve ever heard a college football stadium
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They will be red in 2025. And that is not the only change being made!
The team boxes will be black. And there will be a little more flare on the sides. The color scheme, the aesthetic of the turf, and the fact that it’s one solid color and not variances of green. That is what the turf will look like at the stadium this fall.
— AD Troy Dannen
Dannen wants to use color to intimidate Nebraska’s opponents.
We under utilized red a lot and I don’t understand it. We don’t light the stadium up from the outside and we should light it red every night. Red is an intimidating color and we should use it a lot more than we use it […] Having those red end zone and I think it’s a strong color. When we put the black letters in the end zone, I think it’s a strong look.
— AD Troy Dannen
As a fan of college football, I am all for more color. I always thought the Cornhuskers had weird turf but I just assumed it had to do with the historic tradition of the program and would never change. Maybe that was the case before and Dannen is bucking the trend. Either way, it’s a good thing.
But with that being said, I don’t know if more red makes Memorial Stadium more intimidating. It is already a challenging place to play because of the passionate fanbase and history. While I can appreciate the sentiment, I don’t think putting more color on the field is going to be the difference between a win and a loss. Maybe I’m wrong. It would be very funny if, say, Michigan loses in Lincoln because of red paint!