Foxboro Stadium

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Foxboro Stadium
Location	Foxborough, Massachusetts
Broke ground	September 23, 1970
Opened	August 15, 1971
Closed	January 19, 2002
Demolished	2002
Owner	Foxboro Stadium Associates (former)
Surface	AstroTurf (1971-1990), Grass (1991-2001)
Construction cost	$7.1 million USD
Former names	Schaefer Stadium (1971-1983) Sullivan Stadium (1983-1989)
Tenants	New England Patriots (NFL) (1971-2001) New England Revolution (MLS) (1996-2001) New England Tea Men (NASL) (1978-1980)
Capacity	60,292 (football and soccer)

Foxboro Stadium (or Foxborough Stadium) was an outdoor sports venue located in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Although the official spelling of the town's name is "Foxborough", the shorter spelling was used for the stadium.^[1]

The stadium was built in 1971 as Schaefer Stadium, and it was to be the home venue for the New England Patriots of the National Football League. The Patriots were previously the Boston Patriots of the American Football League, which entered into an agreement to merge with the NFL in 1966 effective with the 1970 season. The Patriots had played their home games from 1963 to 1968 in Fenway Park, home of baseball's Boston Red Sox, which was poorly suited to be a football venue and also had an inadequate seating capacity (only about 40,000 seats). The site was selected when the owners of Bay State Raceway donated the land needed.

Foxboro Stadium was built at an announced cost of $4,000,000, (later determined to be about $7.1 million, or $37.5 million in 2007 dollars) a very small amount, even at the time, for a major sports stadium. (The reason for this was because the Patriots received no funding from the state of Massachusetts or the city of Boston.) Because of this, and also the era in which it was designed and built, it had very few amenities—the type that became commonplace at football stadiums a short time later—such as individual seating, "club seats", luxury suites, and deluxe locker rooms for the teams. As premium seating became a major source of revenue for professional sports teams, Foxboro Stadium became functionally obsolete. It also only had about 60,000 seats, among the lowest in the league^[2].

Like the majority of outdoor sports venues built in the U.S. at the time, Foxboro Stadium was designed for the use of an artificial turf playing surface. When this practice fell out of favor in the 1990s due to the supposed higher level of injuries resulting from play on the artificial surface, the field's surface was replaced by natural grass, as it was at many other facilities. At Foxboro Stadium the replacement grass field never seemed to drain properly, resulting in the playing surface often becoming a quagmire during wet playing conditions.

When built it was initially referred to as Schaefer Stadium for the brewery of that name in an early example of the sale of naming rights. When this agreement expired, Anheuser-Busch took over the rights, but instead of putting the name of one of its brands of beer on the stadium, agreed to name it Sullivan Stadium in honor of the family who was at the time the majority owners of the Patriots. Only after the Sullivan family sold their majority interest in the team did it actually become known officially as Foxboro Stadium.

Foxboro Stadium also served as the venue at times for the home football games of Boston College, and hosted numerous other outdoor events, primarily concerts. Some concerts include Simon and Garfunkel, Paul McCartney, David Bowie, New Kids on the Block, Van Halen (as part of the 1988 Monsters of Rock tour which also featured The Scorpions, Dokken and Metallica), Aerosmith, Pink Floyd, U2, Madonna, Dave Matthews Band, The Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Guns N' Roses (co-headlined with Metallica), The Who, Genesis and 'N Sync.

English rock band Pink Floyd performed at this venue on what turned out to be their last North American tour to date. Pink Floyd played three sold out shows at this venue on their 1994 tour in support of their album The Division Bell.

The venue hosted six games in the 1994 FIFA World Cup, five in the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup, the 1996 and 1999 MLS Cups, the inaugural Founders Cup, as well as the WWF King of the Ring tournament in 1985 and 1986.

Foxboro Stadium was demolished after the conclusion of the 2001 season (the season in which the Patriots won their first Super Bowl). The last game played in the stadium— "The Tuck Game"—was played in a snow storm; a Patriots win against the Oakland Raiders, which famously featured an overturned fumble call based on the scarcely enforced tuck rule in the final minutes. The stadium's former site is now one of the parking lots of its successor, Gillette Stadium.

Coordinates: 42°5′33.28″N, 71°16′2.91″W

[edit] Notes and references

[edit] External links

• Schaefer Stadium and The Great Flush