Franklin Field
From Free net encyclopedia
Franklin Field is the University of Pennsylvania's stadium for football and track and field. It opened in 1895 at a cost of $100,000 for the first running of the Penn Relays. The Field, deemed by the NCAA as the oldest stadium still operating for football, was the site of the nation's first scoreboard in 1895, and became the nation's first two-tiered football stadium in 1922.
Image:FranklinField.JPGThe Army-Navy football game series was held at Franklin Field for many of the years between 1899 and 1935 and was, at one time, the largest two-tiered stadium in the United States. Today, the stadium seats 52,593.
Franklin Field was also the home of the Philadelphia Eagles from 1958 until 1970. The Eagles hosted the 1960 NFL Championship Game at Franklin Field, defeating the Green Bay Packers, 17-13, in Packers coach Vince Lombardi's only career playoff loss. Also on August 23, 1958, the first-ever Canadian Football League game was played at Franklin Field, as the Hamilton Tiger-Cats defeated the Ottawa Rough Riders, 13-7; this game marked the first and only time that two Canadian football teams would play a game on American soil.
Several infamous incidents occurred at the stadium during the Eagles' tenure there. During the halftime show of a December 15, 1968 game with the Minnesota Vikings, which resulted in a 24-17 loss, Eagles fans booed a young man dressed as Santa Claus and pelted him with snowballs. At a nationally televised Eagles-Giants Monday Night Football game on November 23, 1970, announcer Howard Cosell was apparently drunk as he called the play-by-play; after throwing up on color man Don Meredith's celebrated cowboy boots, Cosell left the stadium midway through the game. Later, denying drunkenness, he claimed among other things that his dizziness resulted from running laps around the Franklin Field track before the game with track star Tommie Smith. (The previously winless Eagles upset the Giants 27-20 to deny them a chance for first place in the NFC East division.)
From the 1990s until 2002, to accommodate the Eagles and Philadelphia Phillies major league teams whose regular seasons at Veterans Stadium overlapped by over a month, the Temple University football team moved its August and September home games to Franklin Field, playing out the remainder of those seasons back at the Vet.
In 2004, Franklin Field was home to the first ever Rugby League match between the United States and Australia. The United States led the World Cup holders Australia for much of the game before eventually losing 24-36.
Franklin Field has hosted the annual Penn Relays, the largest track-and-field meet in the U.S., for over 100 years.
The stadium was the site of a speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in which he accepted the 1936 Democratic Party's nomination for a second term as president.
