Qualla: Peden Stadium

Peden Stadium: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit OhioOat, CC BY-SA 3.0. One hundred eighty-five thousand dollars. That was the construction cost in 1929 for what is now the oldest college football venue in the Mid-American Conference and the twenty-ninth oldest college stadium in the country. The original capacity was twelve thousand, with simple grandstands on either side of the field and the Hocking River curling along the south end. It was called Ohio Stadium then - which is confusing now, since the other Ohio Stadium an hour and a half away in Columbus is where Ohio State plays in front of 102,000 fans. Athens kept its original size and most of its original character. The capacity has roughly doubled, the technology has been updated, but the bones of the place are still 1929: a small Depression-era college stadium that the Bobcats simply never outgrew the way Ohio State did.

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Image: OhioOat | CC BY-SA 3.0

Peden Stadium: Don Peden

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NotJamestack, CC BY-SA 4.0. 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 7...

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Image: NotJamestack | CC BY-SA 4.0

Peden Stadium: Eisenhower Landed Here

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit APocketJoker, CC BY-SA 4.0. 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 ...

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Image: APocketJoker | CC BY-SA 4.0

Peden Stadium: Capacity, Victory Hill, and the Sook Center

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit APocketJoker, CC BY-SA 4.0. 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...

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Image: APocketJoker | CC BY-SA 4.0

Peden Stadium: Football's 150th Anniversary

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit APocketJoker, CC BY-SA 4.0. 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 f...

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Image: APocketJoker | CC BY-SA 4.0

Peden Stadium: Flying Over the Old Bowl

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greenstrat, Public domain. 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 ...

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Image: Greenstrat | Public domain