It's not often that the Idaho Vandals receive national coverage from ESPN. The last time the worldwide leader profiled the Vandals in sports was an article comparing the careers of the Petrino Brothers. You can read that article here.  

Now the home of the Vandals has been declared at 'college football's weirdest stadium in a new article from ESPN.  The Kibbie Dome celebrates its fifty years of operation this year and wasn't always an indoor stadium.  The roof was put on the facility in 1975 says an architect to ESPN:

"Here's the irony: the Kibbie Dome is not really a dome," said Alec Holser, a founding partner of Opsis Architecture in Portland, Oregon, who led the 2011 renovation of the building. "There are other geodesic domes made of wood, but this is actually a vault.


Kimbie Dome Facts:

The Kibbie Dome is named after a William Kibbie who provided the initial funds in the early 70s to get the roof on the stadium. The roof is 400 feet  from sideline-to-sideline, and its maximum height is 150 feetabove the hash marks, according to Wikipedia. Several former players and coaches told ESPN that the construction of the stadium favors the Vandals in home games.  The unique construction allows 8,000 fans to sound like 80,000, recalls one coach. It is one of the few, if not the only, football stadium made out of wood.  The electric bills are considerable because there is no natural light in the building. This year will mark the end of basketball being played in the Kibbie Dome as Idaho opens up their new basketball area the ICCU Arena.

Challenges Before Renovations:

"Over the years, the end walls began to deteriorate," he said. "They were just covered with a single layer of plywood and woodpeckers put holes in them so, if you stood in there, you'd see these beams of light coming through. It didn't really have any insulation, and apparently the heating system had conked out 25 years ago, and so it got progressively colder in there as the season went on. Of course with the bird holes, that added to the wind coming through the space."

KIbbie Dome Photos

The Kibbie Dome has once again gained national attention thanks to ESPN. We look at Idaho's 'unique' facility in this photo gallery.

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