Crew Stadium in Columbus is the first soccer specific stadium in the country. Yeah, it was built inexpensively. But, that is one great place to watch soccer.
Worst.
The Orange Bowl in Miami was just terrible. The wrecking ball will improve it.
Dolphin Stadium is fine for football but a miserable place for baseball. There aren’t any good sightlines at all.
The Rose Bowl . I haven’t been there since 1998, so hopefully they’ve improved it. Really in need of improvement, better concessions, and parking
The worst? Exhibition Stadium, Toronto - freezing 10 months per year, scorching hot two months. Horrible lines of sight (except maybe for football), poor facilities, hard to reach. Nothing redeeming.
Busch Stadium out of St. Louis was just completed a year ago. It has a wonderful view of the St. Louis skyline, and was home to some World Champions last year.
It was a toss-up between the two, frankly, but I’ve a wee soft-spot for the Blue Brazil (because the nickname is brilliant, and I used to love the stock-car racing at Central Park when I was a kid).
PNC Park in Pittsburgh was judged by ESPN in 2003 to be the best baseball stadium.
It was a vast improvement over the Three Rivers/Veteran’s/Riverfront Stadium monstrosities. The cookie-cutter stadiums were atrocious in pretty much every respect. They hosted all manner of sports and were good for none of them.
MLB: I would go with Petco Park in San Diego. I like Camden Yards, too.
NFL: The best one I’ve been to personally is Bank of America in Charlotte, NC. Home of the Carolina Panthers
NBA: Another nod to Charlotte and the Bobcats Arena. It benefits from being one of the newest in the NBA. I must say I have a nostalgic feeling for Madison Square Garden, but it is getting a little long in the tooth.
College Basketball: I’m biased on this one. Gotta go with the Dean E. Smith Center in Chapel Hill
Worst
MLB: The place the Marlins play. Definitely not the best for baseball.
NFL: I don’t really care for Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands. I’m sure a lot of New Yorkers would disagree, but IMHO it has the personality of Al Gore in a coma. It must have been built during that mid-70’s timeframe where nobody had a sense of style.
College Basketball: It gets a lot of good publicity for the energetic crowds, but as a place to comfortably enjoy a game, Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium is bad. Very bad. Cramped. Hot. Ugly. But again, I’m a little biased on this one.
I love the RBC Center in Raleigh, for NHL hockey. There isn’t a bad seat in the house. It is also the home of NC State Basketball. Getting in and out of the arena is a breeze most of the time, and I rarely have to park in a satellite lot.
We’ve gotten 11 posts in, and nobody’s mentioned Fenway?
Fenway’s certainly my favorite. OTOH, there’s a lot of ballparks I haven’t been to.
Besides Fenway, I’ve watched baseball in RFK, Memorial Stadium, Camden Yards, Yankee Stadium, Shea, Dodger Stadium, and whatever they call the current Braves ballpark. Plus a coupla spring-training ballparks, and a coupla minor-league ballparks.
The Windsor Spitfires (ontario hockey league) arena is a real dump, I have a hard time believing there is a worse hockey arena out there.
I work at the Air Canada Center and despite the fact that the Leafs play there it is actually a very nice place to watch a hockey game (the leafs dressing room is a palace btw). The arena almost makes watching the Leafs tolerable.
I can’t say much for the team currently playing there, but Conseco Fieldhouse in Indy is just an all-around great arena for basketball. It also did a good job with Arena Football when the Firebirds were here. It has a great atmosphere around it, and is just an all around enjoyable place to be.
Now, watching the Pacers post-Reggie, well, that’s a different story.
I can only speak for places I’ve been, but my favorite baseball stadium is absolutely Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City - and I’m not just saying that because I’m a Royals fan. How can you not love the way those fountains light up at night? And the view of that giant Royals-logo scoreboard when you approach from I-70 - beautiful.
For indoor arenas, the one I’ve liked best was the TD Waterhouse Arena in Orlando.
Worst? I’m not very fond of Shea Stadium, although I don’t think it deserves the extremely bad rap that it gets. Still, of all the stadiums I’ve been in, I guess it’s the worst.
For indoor, I thought the Staples Center in L.A. was pretty bad. Admittedly, it was a Clippers game, so maybe if the place had a more rockin’ crowd (do the Clippers have ANY fans, or only hecklers?) I would have enjoyed it more, but I usually sit in the cheap seats wherever I go (so I don’t generally complain about bad views), and the cheap seats there have worse views than the cheap seats elsewhere.
AutoZone Park, home of the AAA Memphis Redbirds, is said to be one of the best stadiums in the minors. I’ve only been to a couple of other minor-league stadiums (stadia?), so I don’t really have an informed opinion. It’s fantastic to go to a game and be right in the middle of downtown Memphis, though.
The Dean Dome is up there on my college b-ball list as well, not only because everything in the building, including the girders, is Carolina Blue, but because it’s a fairly airy, open place. I think the RBC Center is nicer in terms of amenities and so forth, but I found it to be a bit claustrophobic in the thoroughfare areas, mostly because of all the obstacles behind which crowds can form (stairs, food stalls, etc.).
I agree that Cameron, for all its atmosphere, is a somewhat uncomfortable place to watch a game. The seats seem to be WAY too close together, making it tough to get out if you need to. There aren’t enough bathrooms, and the food stalls are in relatively narrow high-traffic areas, thus clogging things up when a line forms. On top of all that, upper-level seats cost $60 a seat, which AFAIK is pretty steep for college b-ball tickets (nice LL seats in the Dean Dome are roughly $40, FWIW).
The nicest pro venue I’ve ever been in? Hmmm…I think some of the NBA arenas (Orlando, Washington, and Charlotte I’ve been to) are quite nice. I agree that Charlotte is one of the best arenas in use today (the new arena, not the old Charlotte Coliseum).
The worst I’ve been in? Lynah Rink at Cornell University. Seriously, hockey is THE big (revenue) sport at Cornell, and yet Lynah is SO. FREAKING. SMALL. Aside from having too few seats, there’s not a lot of circulating space around the stands, and scarce restrooms or permanent food vendors. It’s kind of sad because the building that it’s attached to (more sports facilities) is much nicer.
I am amending my answer above regarding the worst indoor sports venue - Nassau Coliseum out-sucks the Staples Center by a mile. I must have blocked that Islanders game out of my memory temporarily.
