Don C. Peden served as a coach and athletic director at Ohio University for twenty-seven years, helping to found the Mid-American Conference in the 1940s and shaping intercollegiate athletics regionally and nationally. Born in Kewanee, Illinois, Peden died in 1970 at the age of 71. The stadium was renamed for him after his death. In August 2022, the playing surface itself got a second name: Frank Solich Field, honoring the coach who led Ohio football from 2005 through 2021 and built the program's longest sustained run of success. The full name now is Frank Solich Field at Peden Stadium - a clumsy double honor that captures something true about how college football stadiums accumulate dedications faster than they accumulate seats.

In the 1960s, when President Dwight Eisenhower visited Ohio University, his helicopter landed at Peden Stadium - the only place on campus with a flat, secure open space large enough to handle the aircraft and the security perimeter. Both Lyndon Johnson and Barack Obama also used the stadium as a staging area during their campus visits. It is one of the small infrastructural truths about American campuses that the football field doubles as a presidential helipad. Beyond presidents, the stadium has hosted high school football games, state playoff games, 5K runs that start at the 50-yard line, and concerts. The annual 'Yell Like Hell' homecoming pep rally fills the lower bowl. The space is used most weekends in fall, even when the Bobcats are not playing.

The listed seated capacity is 24,000, but the official record attendance numbers all eclipse it - because of Victory Hill, the grass embankment at the north endzone where standing-room crowds spread out to watch the game from above. The Perry and Sandy Sook Academic Center, built at the north endzone in 2018 and designed by Ohio-based MSA Sport, added 26,000 square feet of facilities: an academic advising center for student athletes, classrooms, hospitality areas, and a large observation deck overlooking the field. The Sook Center pushed potential standing capacity to roughly 28,000. In September 2025, the Bobcats set a stadium attendance record beating West Virginia 17-10 in front of a crowd of 26,740.

On November 6, 2019, Peden Stadium hosted the official game commemorating college football's 150th anniversary. The selection made sense in a way that anyone outside the sport might find strange: the first intercollegiate football game in history was played in 1869, and college football celebrated the milestone with a game between Ohio and Miami - a rivalry that traces back to the earliest decades of the sport in the Midwest. Ohio won 24-21 in front of a packed Peden Stadium with national television coverage. The choice of venue acknowledged what the building represents: a small college stadium that has been in continuous use since the Hoover administration, in a sport that has otherwise mostly moved on from 24,000-seat venues.

From the air, Peden Stadium is a small football bowl pressed against the Hocking River on the south edge of the Ohio University campus. The river runs immediately past the south endzone, with the Walter Fieldhouse and other athletic facilities adjacent. The brick concourses, the Sook Center at the north end, the open Victory Hill grass embankment - the whole assembly fits a compact rectangle. North of the stadium, South Green's residence halls rise. Across the river, the forested foothills begin. From cruising altitude, the geometry of small-college football is visible at a glance: a stadium proportional to the school, in a town proportional to the school, on a river that defines where the campus could grow and where it could not.