While seated with several thousand other Salukii fans anxious to get their first look at the marvelous, sensational, beautiful . . . take your choice . . . new Saluki Stadium this week, we couldn’t help but have memories of the old and worn-out McAndrew Stadium. It was time for retirement of the facility constructed in the mid-1930s largely due to the untiring effort of SIU’s (the school’s name at the time was actually “Southern Illinois Normal Unversity”) athletics director and football coach William McAndrew.
McAndrew Stadium, actually it wasn’t so-named until after the AD’s death in 1943, was as brilliant at that time as Saluki Stadium is today. The overall cost of the project was to have been just $75,000 with the W.P.A. kicking in $60,000. It’s interesting to note that Carbondale’s businessmen kicked in $2,278,75, faculty members $1,493 and the senior class $35. Even the Bloomington Daily Pantagraph’s sports editor, Fred “Brick” Young, a friend of McAndrew’s, donated $10.
Final cost of the project was around $100,000 and it was described as being one of the finest football facilities in the midwest.
The multi-million dollar Saluki Way project has been aided by several different sources and still is somewhat short of the mark, but already has been termed a success.
And, successful, it has been. We’ll stop short of calling the new Saluki Stadium “a tourist attraction”, but it’s next to that. Anyone wanting to be critical of the design, the seating, the scoreboard, the press box, etc., is going to have a difficult time of it.
Nevertheless, while listening to the more than absolutely needed number of speeches at the Tuesday night “ribbon-cutting” event, we couldn’t help but remember some of McAndrew’s greatest moments . . . at least happenings that we’ll never forget.
Like the first time we were ever at the stadium. It was 70 years ago, “Boy Scout Day” in 1940, when we marched on the turf and considered it a great thrill.
Then there was the night, 20 years later, when we worked our first game there after being named SIU’s sports information director. The press boxes, and there were three, had seats for just 18 persons and that included the field electrician, P.A. announcer, coaches and what few members of the media that we could squeeze into the tight spaces.
And there were so many others.
Like, still in 1960, the Salukis scoring two touchdowns in the first 25 seconds of a game against Eastern Michigan while on their way to a 66-8 win. It completed a perfect 6-0 conference season and SIU’s first league championship in the Interstate Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
