It’s in Moscow, but it’s nowhere near Russia.
It’s a dome, but by no means is it round.
It’s the Kibbie Dome, the novelty home of the Idaho Vandals.
No. 24 Fresno State will see for itself this weekend that there’s nothing else like it in college football.
“Our players don’t know the Kibbie Dome from the Superdome,” Bulldogs coach Pat Hill says. “They just know they’re playing indoors on artificial turf. That’s all they need to know.”
Here’s a non-scientific briefing on what they don’t know.
Start with the dome itself. It isn’t round, because the building is square. The roof arches from one side of the structure to the other. That’s what you call a barrel roof. Hill has a simpler description.
“It’s kind of like an airport hangar kind of deal,” he says.
The place won the 1976 Outstanding Structural Engineering Achievement Award, and how many programs pack one of those in the varsity trophy case?
“I didn’t expect it to look like that,” says Vandals cornerback DeAngelo Ramsey. “It’s a different dome, let’s say that.”
So are the curved walls on the outside entrances. The facade’s pixelated design has a mirage-like look.
“It was designed in the ’70s,” says Idaho assistant athletic director Becky Paull, needing to explain no further.
Inside, 16,000 seats are situated behind the sidelines. No seats are behind the end zones because the wall is just a few yards away. More than a few receivers have learned the hard way to slow down near the goalposts, Paull says. If the tube used to store the carpet doesn’t get them–that’s right, they roll up the carpet–the unforgiving wall will.
The stands and team benches are separated by a running track and not much more.
“The fans are right on top of you,” Ramsey says. “It gets crazy loud in that dome. The sound is bouncing off the wall.”
That isn’t the only heat teams feel. The thermostat is locked at 72 degrees, but that doesn’t take into account body heat generated from big crowds jammed into confined spaces. It’s even worse for the players who are running around on a surface that bounces heat up instead of absorbing some of it as natural grass does.
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Breathing can be a little difficult at an elevation of 2,583 feet. All these factors have helped Idaho turn home-turf advantage into a 105-45 record in the dome.
The Vandals, in their first year in the Western Athletic Conference, are here to stay. That means Fresno State and the others get to experience the Kibbie Dome on a biennial basis.
“It affords us a chance to be unique,” Idaho coach Nick Holt says. “You’ll go away saying, `This is a cool place, but thank God I only have to come up here every other year.”‘