Inside The Huskies

One Man's Longstanding Opinion of Husky Stadium

It's always interesting to hear what Ivan Maisel has to say.
Dan Raley|
One Man's Longstanding Opinion of Husky Stadium
One Man's Longstanding Opinion of Husky Stadium

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Washington Huskies

Ivan Maisel has been around longer than any other sports writer currently covering college football on a national level.

You probably saw him on TV or a podcast, or read his online offerings while he was at ESPN. 

Before that, he worked for the Dallas Morning News and Newsday in New York.

Now he's at On3 Sports, a fairly new college football entity.

Maisel is an Alabama native — how else could it be? — who's been to more college stadiums than anyone over the past several decades and interacted with everyone.

After all, he's the guy who once began a story with the following straight-forward paragraph: "Meet Dan Raley, the bravest man in America." Ah, but that's another story for another day.

This week, Maisel listed his top 11 college football stadiums. Yet ever the Southern gentleman that he is, Ivan picked out his best ones and the ranked them alphabetically. Smart guy how he avoids the snarky feedback sure to come.

Still, we thought it would be interesting to hear his take on Husky Stadium. How others see us and our landmarks. View our longstanding civic institutions, such as the Space Needle, the Pike Place Market ... and that century-old football palace by the lake.

Waxing poetically, the well-traveled and well-respected Maisel jotted down the following observations about the place, seemingly vital as everyone enters into a realignment beauty contest these days:

"I’m a sucker for Husky Stadium. The setting, with a view beyond one end zone of Lake Washington and, on a clear day, the Cascade Mountains, is sublime. The roofs that jut over the grandstands not only provide protection from the rain but reverberate the decibel level produced by those often damp but never shy fans. Washington is the rare college football program that thrives in a pro sports market, which means you get a college football experience while enjoying a major American city. The fate of the Huskies is uncertain in this unsettling new age, but they have a solid program in an ideal venue in a great city. What’s not to like?"

Maisel was a regular visitor to Montlake during the Don James era and the national championship run. It's probably been a while since he's been out to the Northwest. We'll no doubt see him again, soaking it all in.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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