When the recent expansion added permanent seating in the south end of Ohio Stadium, designers were careful not to connect the new stands with the original structure of the stadium. It remained shaped like a horseshoe; it remained “The Shoe.”
As we know, there are larger football stadiums on college campuses and well-known ones not on campuses (USC plays in the L.A. Coliseum, and UCLA plays in the Rose Bowl, for example), but there isn’t any stadium so recognizable and so well associated with its university and team as The Shoe. “The Big House” is, well, big.