Rice–Totten Stadium

Rice–Totten Stadium The value of the place is not in the numbers but in the ground beneath the floodlights. You can see it on the pitch: Fear The FCS is stencilled across the end zone in white, and beyond that, the words Charles Prophet Field run along the sideline. The turf is new, a replacement for the natural grass that sat there for decades, laid down after a campaign called Touchdown for Turf . The surface is artificial, but the sense of the place remains unchanged.

What distinguishes the stadium is its location in Itta Bena, far from the interstate. The stands are open and the seating faces the Mississippi Delta open sky. The east side holds the main grandstand, built in the early 2010s after a renovation that cost over five million dollars.

The stadium opened in 1958 under the name Magnolia Stadium. It was renamed in 2000 to honour Jerry Rice and Willie Totten, the quarterback-receiver pair known as the Satellite Express. The capacity is ten thousand, a figure that rarely fills, but the ground still hosts the Delta Devils of Mississippi Valley State University.

There are no concerts here, no major non-football events to mark the calendar. The only time the team reached the playoffs was 1984, and the match was played away at Louisiana Tech.