Saturday begins a series of four LU football conference games (TCU, Houston, Iowa State and Colorado) at the home of the Kansas City Chiefs. (Eric Thomas illustration/Kansas Reflector)
When the Kansas Jayhawks football team travels from Lawrence to Arrowhead Stadium to play Texas Christian University on Saturday, the venue — a 76,000-seat NFL stadium — will provide a distinctive home game for the Jayhawks.
However, in the overlapping worlds of NFL and NCAA football, teams often loan stadiums to one another for a variety of reasons.
The Jayhawks’ use of Arrowhead is temporary, as their renovation of their home stadium in Lawrence forced them to other locations for home games.
KU’s football season began with two games at Children’s Mercy Park, the home of MLS’s Sporting Kansas City on the west side of both the Kansas City metro area and the Kansas-Missouri state line. The Jayhawks faltered in their second game there, losing by a field goal to UNLV.
Saturday begins a series of four conference games (TCU, Houston, Iowa State and Colorado) at the home of the Kansas City Chiefs.
Besides NFL games, many stadiums sit idle during the rest of the week — or for multiple weeks when teams travel or have a bye. Adding college football games on Thursday, Friday or Saturday can provide at least a second day of use. Some NFL franchises rent their stadiums to college programs for a relatively small fee, but cash in on concessions and parking. Parking for Saturday’s game at Arrowhead ranges from $50 to $200.
It’s a natural partnership in another way. NCAA football functions as a de facto minor league for the NFL. Some elite college players receive a preview of NFL life when they suit up for a game at an NFL stadium.
There are a handful of durable relationships in which NFL teams host NCAA teams for the majority of the college teams’ games. At least six college teams will play a majority of their home games at an NFL stadium this season. These teams have long-standing agreements allowing them to play at NFL stadiums each year:
- University of Miami (FL) at Hard Rock Stadium (Dolphins)
- Temple University at Lincoln Financial Field (Eagles)
- Pittsburgh University at Acrisure Stadium (Steelers)
- University of Southern Florida at Raymond James Stadium (Buccaneers)
- University of Nevada Las Vegas at Allegiant Stadium (Raiders)
- Tennessee State University at Nissan Stadium (Titans)
It’s difficult to find one of those relationships where a university — especially a state university — has crossed a state line to play its games, as Kansas will do when it travels to Arrowhead in Kansas City, Missouri. It’s a home game, but in a rival state.
Jayhawk fans remember that Saturday’s game at Arrowhead is not the first. KU’s most hated rival, the University of Missouri, won four of the five games played there between 2007 and 2011.
Those Border Showdown games, played Thanksgiving weekend, brought a raucous and consequential regional game to Arrowhead, even selling 80,000 tickets to the 2007 . That rivalry will be renewed in 2025 and 2026, when the Tigers play the Jayhawks again in football, but not at Arrowhead. Each school will host the other, starting with a game in Columbia in 2025.
Similar to the use of Arrowhead by the Jayhawks, a common reason for short-term loans of stadiums between NFL and NCAA teams is stadium construction. For instance, the Minnesota Vikings played two seasons of frigid outdoor football at the University of Minnesota while building a new domed stadium to shield from the northern winter weather.
Northwestern University decided not to partner with the Chicago Bears this season and next during a stadium project, saying that the commute to Soldier Field in downtown Chicago would disrupt campus football culture and complicate life for their players. Instead, they augmented a small lacrosse stadium with thousands of seats to create a temporary football stadium.
Relocating games to an NFL stadium can create an odd fit in a few ways. First, the size of the stadium can be an issue. Arrowhead Stadium seats almost 30,000 more people than David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium did before the renovation began (it will seat about 5,000 fewer people than that after the renovation). Only a marquee college football match-up would fill a stadium as large as Arrowhead.
Similarly, many of the annual partnerships listed above between NFL and NCAA teams often don’t fill stadiums. In Temple University’s recent home opener at Lincoln Financial Field, the home of the NFL Philadelphia Eagles, attendance was 13,945 . That left more than 50,000 open seats. When stadiums are that empty, they feel like echoey caverns rather than intimidating home fields, like a gaggle of parents filling a few bleachers at the local high school’s varsity football field to watch their 11-year-olds play flag football.
The opposite can be true. Some college fan bases are so loyal that they struggle to jam into NFL stadiums. Because many college football stadiums are larger than 90,000 seats, those teams actually downsize when borrowing an NFL stadium.
For instance, the University of Georgia played its first game this season at Mercedes Benz Stadium, the home of the Atlanta Falcons. That venue meant fewer seats: 71,000 seats vs. their home stadium of more than 93,000 seats. The attendance for that match-up with Clemson — 78,827 people — showed the demand for that ticket.
Of course, the Georgia Bulldogs, the national No. 1 team, sold that game.
The biggest games in college football often relocate to NFL stadiums. Each year, the rivalry between Oklahoma and Texas fills “JerryWord,” the opulent home of the Dallas Cowboys. Army and Navy will face off at FedEx Field, where the Washington Commanders play home games. The championship game in 2025 will be at the Houston Texans’ NRG Stadium. Add to that all of the bowl games that NFL stadiums host.
While KU hoped to sell out Arrowhead , Saturday’s ticket should be easier to snag than those blockbuster games. The Jayhawks, although entering the season nationally ranked, lost three games of their first four, all of them by less than a touchdown. TCU, with a total enrollment of less than 12,000, enters the game 2-2.
When you combine the match-up with the distance from KU’s campus to Arrowhead (a 50-minute drive in clear traffic), there will be seats available at Arrowhead on Saturday, I promise.
Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here .
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