I like the fact that NIU has been given opportunities to play at Soldier Field, I think their football program deserves it. I believe this was their third game there in the last 5 years, but this was the only one where I felt the traffic managers and parking was a complete mess! How can a city like Chicago and a stadium like Soldier Field be so unorganized? It was a 2:30pm game, my group got down there at 10:50am in hopes of parking and tailgating. Last year, when NIU played Wisconsin, we did the same thing with no problems. This year, the main south lot was "coupons" only, and we were paying cash again. The signs they had on Lake Shore Drive didn't help, and if you followed the signs, they led you nowhere to park. Three times I asked a traffic official where we needed to go, and three times we got different answers that were wrong. We spent an hour driving around the stadium and all of the museums there, and when we finally got to a distant outside parking lot (that we were told we could go to) the attendant said it was full! We had to settle ( and were lucky) to find parking in an underground parking garage, but we couldn't tailgate or grill our food, and we were away from all of the live outdoor action. We were very disappointed. The rest of the event was fine.