USA Today Names Boone Pickens Stadium Best College Football Stadium

The best college football stadium in America resides in Payne County, Oklahoma — at least, according to a USA Today exercise.

The outlet used reviews from Yelp, TripAdvisor and Google to compile a list of the best college football stadiums for 2025, where BPS beat out Bill Snyder Family Stadium (Kansas State) and Bryant-Denny Stadium (Alabama) for the top spot. With more than 1,700 combined reviews, Boone Pickens Stadium had an averaged of 4.8 stars.

The Big 12 features four stadiums in the Top 25 of USA Today’s rankings with BYU’s Lavell Edwards Stadium (No. 12) and West Virginia’s Milan Puskar Stadium (No. 17) joining OSU and K-State on the list.

It hasn’t always been this way. Boone Pickens’ landscape-shifting donations turned the then-Lewis Field into what it is today. Pickens donated $70 million in 2003 which helped renovate spruce up the south side of BPS, adding suites and club seating. Pickens donated $165 million in 2006 — the largest donation in the history of college athletics. The north side was given a similar treatment to the southside in 2006, and as part of that massive Pickens donation, about 20,000 new seats were added to the west end zone, and the stadium was bowled in 2008.

There have been more recent updates to the stadium, as well. In 2022, OSU started a $55 million upgrade to seating, increasing leg room and adding chairbacks to certain sections. OSU is also introducing field-level seating in 2025 in the east end zone. The capacity for the 2025 season sits at 52,168.

It’s truly a cathedral of college football. Opponents will say the sidelines are too tight, but to me, it provides a feature that makes college football college football — the atmosphere. There isn’t a whole lot like a ranked matchup in Stillwater, America underneath a neon black sky.

The Cowboys are 48-17 at home across the past 10 seasons. One of the best examples of the stadium’s powers came in 2018. OSU finished the regular season 6-6 that year but went 5-2 at home. One of those wins was a 38-35 win against No. 6 Texas. Another was a 45-41 win against No. 7 West Virginia. Both were all-time classics despite an otherwise forgettable season for the Pokes.

The Cowboys have seven opportunities to make some more memories in BPS in 2025, starting with an Aug. 28 season-opener against UT-Martin.