It’s wrestling. It’s football. It’s a baseball stadium. All in one day.
Rutgers and Maryland announced this week the schools will square off in a wrestling-football doubleheader next year at Yankee Stadium in New York. The “Big Ten Battle in the Bronx” is set for Nov. 4, 2017.
One ticket will be good for both events that day, unlike a Rutgers wrestling-football separate admission event scheduled for Nov. 19 this year at Rutgers’s on-campus High Point Solutions Stadium. That day, Rutgers faces Princeton at 11 a.m. in wrestling, and Rutgers faces Penn State at 8 p.m. in football.
Times have not been announced for next year’s Battle in the Bronx, but if the wrestling meet starts at noon, the football game likely would start at 3:30 p.m. to allow 1 1/2 to two hours between events.
JUST ANNOUNCED!
— Maryland Terrapins (@umterps) September 13, 2016
Terps to battle Rutgers in double header at Yankee Stadium next season!https://t.co/drZJVcVFF6 pic.twitter.com/oyps4iAY1h
Last November, the Iowa wrestling team beat then-No. 1 Oklahoma State at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City in front of an NCAA-record 42,287 fans at the first wrestling meet held in a Division I football stadium. Later that night, the Iowa football team took on Minnesota.
The Iowa-Oklahoma State wrestling meet was held in Kinnick Stadium’s south end zone.
“It’ll be a very different format,” Rutgers athletics director Pat Hobbs told NJ Advance Media. “Because of the way the field is configured, the current plan is to put the wrestling mat right down in the corner where (Yankee Stadium) home plate is. So it actually won’t be on the football field.”
Mark Holtzman, the executive director of non-baseball events for the New York Yankees, told NJ Advance Media the mats for the Rutgers-Maryland wrestling meet would be by one of the goal posts near home plate. Yankee Stadium’s football field runs vertical from its pitcher’s mound to center field.
“(Fans) will have their specific seats (for the football game), but we’re only going to open up the lower level behind home plate for the wrestling,” Holtzman told the website. “It’s a little low for football but it’s a great seat for wrestling.”
At least one person hopes athletes from Rutgers and Maryland will compete in both sports that day.
@McMurphyESPN are the same players going to compete in both? Because that would be cool.
— Sean Kelly (@skelly54) September 13, 2016
