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Alumni Association Home > May-June 2009   Print View Chief Executive Officer's Column 5/6/2009 Follow Gopher Football Home Alumni Association National Board members got a sneak preview of the new TCF Bank Stadium this spring, courtesy of Joel Maturi, director of Intercollegiate Athletics. We donned hard hats and fluorescent vests as we watched construction crews preparing the stadium for opening day on September 12, 2009. This grand structure will be home not only for Gopher football, but the site of campus and community events year round. Within shouting distance of the McNamara Alumni Center, the stadium is hard to miss, but I encourage all alumni, students, faculty, staff, and friends to take an even closer look. The Homecoming Executive Committee is inviting the public to an open house at TCF Bank Stadium on Sunday, October 4, to help kick off Homecoming Week 2009. Stop by to take a guided tour of the stadium and show your maroon-and-gold pride. Here’s a brief preview of what you’ll find at TCF Bank Stadium: Spectacular views of downtown Minneapolis; The 20,000-square-foot new home for the Minnesota Marching Band; Three outdoor plazas dedicated to Minnesota war veterans, the Native American tribes of Minnesota, and University students—our future alumni; The names of each of Minnesota’s 87 counties carved in stone and displayed around the stadium’s perimeter; A 48-by-108-foot scoreboard that is four times larger than the Metrodome’s; A concourse three times as wide as the Metrodome’s and open so the game is always in sight; A two-story team store, open all year; A football-shaped home-team locker room; An engraved granite sign over Section 141 on the 50-yard line on the home-team side that proclaims “University of Minnesota Alumni Association,” and an accompanying commemorative plaque noting that your Alumni Association raised money for Memorial Stadium in the 1920s and made the first $1 million pledge to TCF Bank Stadium. Gopher football’s glorious return to campus since its last game on campus in November 1981 will be “The Ultimate Homecoming”—the theme of this year’s festivities. The Homecoming parade—with five celebrity grand marshals—will march down University Avenue toward the TCF Bank Stadium at 7 p.m. on Friday, October 9. Fans will follow the marching band into the stadium, and then the fun really begins, with a pep fest, cheerleaders, coaches, players, the coronation of Homecoming royalty, and fireworks. And on Homecoming day—and every home game day—the McNamara Alumni Center will host a pregame tailgate party. In collaboration with our partners at the University of Minnesota Foundation and the Minnesota Medical Foundation, we’ll open the alumni center doors for food, fellowship, and fun three hours before kickoff, and we’ll show the game on big-screen televisions for those who don’t have tickets. Join us this fall to honor our past and celebrate the future of Golden Gopher football on campus. Go to www.homecoming.umn.edu for updates on Homecoming 2009 events. — Margaret Sughrue Carlson (Ph.D. ’83)

Last modified on 5/12/2009 12:04:13 PM ©2009 by the University of Minnesota Alumni Association. The University of Minnesota Alumni Association is an equal opportunity educator and employer.

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