Michigan Stadium

From the outside, Michigan Stadium looks modest. Most of the seats sit below ground level, so the size stays hidden until a fan walks through a tunnel and the bowl opens up.

Athletic director Fielding Yost talked the university's regents into building it in 1926, with the Yale Bowl as the model. It opened on October 1, 1927, with 72,000 seats and a 33-0 win over Ohio Wesleyan, at a cost of $950,000. Yost wanted something near 140,000 seats, so the footings were poured with room to grow.

It has grown. The official capacity is now 107,601, the largest of any stadium in the United States, and the record crowd, 115,109, came on September 7, 2013, for a 41-30 win over Notre Dame. The nickname is the Big House.

The picture is a plan of the bowl seen from straight above: rings of blue seating in an elongated oval, aisles cutting through them like spokes, and a green field with navy end zones at the center. One narrow block stands apart on the left side, where the press box is. The name and city are set small in capitals at the top of the cream sheet.