I’m guessing that I’ve covered somewhere around 110 home KU football games during my career, and I’d imagine that my average arrival time before each of those games was probably 2 hours prior to kickoff.
On Saturday, I got there nearly 4 hours early.
The reason is obvious. Like so many of you, I wanted to see what the new Booth looked like on game day.
Sure, I had just seen the place inside and out during the media tour four days earlier, but this was different.
This time, the stadium would be alive, with fans present, that special gameday buzz in the air, folks on the hill before the game and all the sights and sounds that typically accompany KU football gamedays in the fall.
While that’s a scene I’ve witnessed dozens of times over — even during some of the worst years the program has endured — this was going to be a first. A brand-new experience altogether. The equivalent of a 15-year-old Beatles fan today joining the rest of us in hearing “Now and Then” for the first time when it was released on Nov. 2, 2023.
While that date will forever be significant for fans of the Fab Four, this date — Aug. 23, 2025 — will forever be significant for Kansas football fans.
And I’ll be darned if I was going to rush my way through it like it was just any other game.
The view from the parking garage on Mississippi Street (left) and the first glimpse of the new venue on game day from the southeast corner of the south end zone. [R1S1 Sports photos]
So, there I was, pulling up early and marveling at the massive words “DAVID BOOTH KANSAS MEMORIAL STADIUM” on the hillside of the new scoreboard, like I was seeing them for the first time. They’ve been there a while now, but they looked different on Saturday. They sparkled. They beckoned.
The walk from the parking garage near the Union was like any other, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the west stands. There’s something so inviting about the way the seats look, even hours before kickoff, when you can see “ROCK CHALK” spelled out proudly on the upper level of the west side.
KU AD Travis Goff told me during the recent tour that the reason behind making the seats pop from all views was that he wanted this stadium to tell a story at all times of the year and all times of day. The title of the story that was told on Saturday, before, during and after the game was simple – Major College Football Lives Here.
It’s been a long time coming, and it’s still a bit surreal that it’s actually here.
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I spent most of my life growing up in Lawrence — moved here from Fort Collins, Colo., when I was 10 — and I have so many memories of Kansas football in that old venue that now exists only as a memory.
I, no doubt like many of you, remember going up to games as a kid and picking up a ticket stub on the ground to get in for free after halftime.
I remember when various businesses throughout Lawrence gave out free tickets when you bought certain products from their store.
I remember all of the great players on opposing teams who put on a show on the Memorial Stadium turf and I remember a whole bunch of Jayhawks who did the same. Heck, I probably remember twice as many Jayhawks who gave everything they had to make that their reality, too, only to fall short of living up to those legends.
Such is life for Kansas football. Scrap that. Such was life for Kansas football.
While Saturday was in a very real way a new beginning for the program, you got the feeling that the new beginning was not solely about the stadium.
It feels like Travis Goff and Lance Leipold and Jalon Daniels and Chancellor Doug Girod, along with countless others behind them, have this program in position to turn the corner and never look back.
The past four years have been special. It’s not nothing to take one of the laughingstocks of college football and lead it to two bowl games in four years. That was a remarkable rebuild. What’s ahead feels like a rebirth.
All of that was palpable with every step in or around the stadium on Saturday.
While I was on the field during pregame warmups, you could feel the buzz building as the fans on the west side started to file in. It was incredible. It was like being at a huge sports bar, where you could hear that electric hum of chatter and conversations from all corners without making out a single syllable.
In a word or two, it was pure excitement.
The more the stands started to fill, the more you could see what it meant to the people who sat in the seats. Huge smiles, wide eyes, heads shaking from side to side. There was a little bit of everything from everybody, young and old.
Parents made sure their young kids were paying attention, just so, one day many years from now when they remind them that they were there that day in 2025, they might have a chance of remembering a part of it.
Older kids made sure their older parents were taking it all in and had everything they needed to manage their emotions and appreciation for what they were seeing and where they were walking.
That perspective even spilled over to the KU coaching staff. As the Jayhawks made their way down the hill from the team buses and into the locker room during the Hawk Walk, I overheard strength coach Matt Gildersleeve telling first-year Defensive Coordinator D.K. McDonald to make sure he smiled on his way in.
At left, the KU players make their way down the hill and into the new stadium for the first time on game day. At right, the view up the stairs that lead to the concourse level from the southwest gates. [R1S1 Sports photos]
Regardless of who you were or what role you played in the day, this was big, big stuff.
For Goff, Girod and David Booth himself, who conducted the pregame coin toss, to the father and son who sat in the upper deck and decided Thursday night to make the drive up from Oklahoma to be here.
It meant something slightly different to every one of us and, yet, the same thing to everyone all at once.
The fact that the facility’s recent facelift had it shining and sparkling like a high school couple on prom night was merely bonus backdrop.
People marveled on social media and to the friends they sat with about the upgraded amenities, how clean and comfortable everything looked and felt and how cool it was to have such a nice, new, first-class stadium to call their own.
There will be parts of the old stadium that many of us miss. Those, too, will be uniquely yours. But in time, I suspect that the new memories made and impact of the Booth as we know it today will make those things easier to let go.
One thing worth remembering – Saturday was just the first grand opening. When they get it finished — like, finished finished — and have everything humming like the permanent residents they soon will be, this place is going to be even more amazing than what you see in front of you today.
But Saturday will live in the hearts and minds of Kansas fans forever. After waiting decades for something like this to happen — all the while believing it probably never would — it feels like we all blinked and now we’re seeing it.
It’s here. It’s real. It’s spectacular. And it’s only going to get better in the days and years ahead.
If you weren’t there on Saturday, make sure you go get your moment sometime soon.
You’ll remember it forever.
