What is The Best Football Stadium in Cincinnati?
Cincinnati is a hotspot for High School Football. You could go across the country and find very few cities that rival the energy and fanbases that these teams generate. These crosstown rivalries are unmatched. The fans of these teams will argue about anything. Football, basketball, academics, just to name a few. But there is one aspect to these rivalries that I believe flies under the radar. Who has the best stadium in Cincinnati?
To settle this debate, I am going to analyze three aspects of each stadium. 1 – Their Homefield Advantage. Do they tend to win more when playing at home? By how much? 2- The Architecture of the Stadium. How does it look? 3 – Their Fans. How loud do they get? How many Students show up? Considering these three questions, I believe the top two stadiums in the Tristate Area are The Pit of Elder and St. Xavier’s RDI Stadium.
When you think of Iconic Sports Stadiums, you think of The Pit. Ranked in the top 10 High School Stadiums in America by MaxPreps, this impressive horseshoe seats 10,000 fans. If you have ever been to a game in The Pit, you would understand the hype. Fans pour in and it gets rowdy. Considering their homefield advantage, you would think that it would be unbeatable. However, when you look at the score breakdown, this is not the case. Over the past two years, we have matched up with them twice. When we played them at The Pit, we won with a resounding 38-7 final score. The year prior, when we played them at Nippert Stadium, we won with a final score of 42-14. So, at their home, they ended up with a -31 margin, while at ours only ended with a -28 margin. While their stadium is exceedingly popular, it does not seem to lead to a great homefield advantage. Next, the architecture of the stadium. I am a major fan of the Horseshoe Stadium and the Concrete Seating. It allows for much more seating. The backdrop of the stadium features their ancient school. I believe this is the best-looking stadium in the Tristate and one of the biggest reasons why it is nationally recognized. For the final piece of criteria, we will discuss their fans. One unique part of The Pit is how close the fans are to the field. This proximity gives a basketball arena feel to it. This makes the away sideline very tight and makes it ridiculously hard to operate. These fans are loud, and that noise tends to bounce all over the stadium. Their student section gets a decent number of students, but I believe other schools do it much better.
Image of The Pit at Max Capacity - The Purple Quill
St. Xavier’s home field, RDI Stadium, flies under the radar. It is not a showstopper stadium. But one thing this stadium does well is create a great homefield advantage. Over the past 2 years, we have matched up with The Bombers four times. This was evenly split two home games and two away games. In their home games at RDI Stadium they performed better by a great margin. They only lost 20-17 and 10-7. This leads to a total point margin of only -6 points. However, when playing away games, their performance dropped drastically. They lost both games, scores being 28-7 and 20-10. This totals out to be a -31-point margin. That is a stupendous drop when they must go on the road. This shows how tough it is to play on The Bomber’s home field. I think one thing that makes this stadium tough to win at is their student section and stadium layout. Their home stands are extremely tall and tower over the field. Combine this with their giant student section that stretches across the stands, and you have an intimidating place to play at.
Sold-Out St. Xavier Homeside Stands - BlogSpot
This matchup may seem like a David vs. Goliath story, but it is much closer than you would think. Considering the three criteria, let’s compare the two. RDI Field’s homefield advantage decimates The Pit. Looking at the point differential, The Bombers performed 516% better when playing at home compared to playing on the Road. The Panther’s performance actually dropped when playing at home by a small percentage. When comparing student sections, St. Xavier gets more kids to their games and gets louder. However, this gap is not big as Elder students still show up and can get rowdy. Finally, the look of each stadium. This one frankly is not close at all. St. Xavier is a traditional stadium and is not very impressive to look at. It does not have much historical value to it. On the other hand, The Pit is incredibly unique. The backdrop of the stadium is unmatched. It can fit almost double the people. Due to these factors added to their national recognition, I believe the Pit reigns supreme as the best stadium in Cincinnati. But all this stadium talk begs the question, when will we get out own stadium?