Franklin Field
is the University of Pennsylvania's stadium for football, field hockey, lacrosse, sprint football, and track and field (and formerly for soccer). It is also used by Penn students for recreation, and for intramural and club sports, including touch football and cricket, and is the site of Penn's graduation exercises, weather permitting. It is located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the eastern edge of Penn's campus, across the Schuylkill River from Center City.
|
FRANKLIN FIELD TICKETS
|
History
Franklin Field opened in 1895 at a cost of $100,000 for the first running of the
Penn Relays. Deemed by the
NCAA as the oldest stadium still operating for football, it was the site of the nation's first scoreboard in 1895. The current stadium structure was built in the 1920s after the original wooden bleachers were torn down. The lower tier was erected in 1922 and the second tier was added in 1925, when it became the second and largest two-tiered stadium in the United States. Today, the stadium seats 52,593.
Penn Relays
Franklin Field has hosted the annual
Penn Relays, the largest track-and-field meet in the U.S., for over 100 years. The Relays were featured in the
April 29,
1961, premiere of ABC's
Wide World of Sports
. The
Army-Navy football game series was held here for many of the years between 1899 and 1935 before moving to the larger
Municipal Stadium in South Philadelphia.
Politics
The stadium was the site of the speech by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt in which he accepted the 1936
Democratic Party's nomination for a second term as president.
[1] It is estimated that a crowd of 100,000 at Franklin Field sat through intermittent rain to hear FDR's speech.
[2]
Eagles
Franklin Field was also the home of the
Philadelphia Eagles from 1958 through 1970. The Eagles hosted the 1960
NFL Championship Game here, defeating the
Green Bay Packers, 17-13, in Packers' coach
Vince Lombardi's only career playoff loss. Also on
August 23,
1958, the first
Canadian Football League game played on American soil between two Canadian teams was played at Franklin Field, as the
Hamilton Tiger-Cats defeated the
Ottawa Rough Riders, 13-7.
Several infamous incidents occurred at the stadium while the Eagles played there. During the halftime show of a
December 15,
1968, game against the
Minnesota Vikings, some fans booed a young man in a
Santa Claus costume who was taken from the stands as the scheduled Santa was snowed in in
Wildwood, New Jersey, and pelted him with snowballs. This incident is often referred to by sportscasters in denigrating Philadelphia sports fans as so mean they booed Santa Claus.
On
November 23,
1970, announcer
Howard Cosell was apparently drunk during a nationally televised broadcast of the Eagles-
New York Giants Monday Night Football
game. After throwing up on
color commentator Don Meredith's cowboy boots shortly before halftime, Cosell left the stadium and took a taxi back to
New York City. Meredith and
play-by-play announcer
Keith Jackson made little mention of his departure during the second half. Later, denying drunkenness, Cosell claimed that he had been dizzy from running laps around Franklin Field's track before the game with track star
Tommie Smith. Four weeks later, the Eagles played their last game at Franklin Field, defeating the cross-state rival
Pittsburgh Steelers, 30-20.
Lacrosse
The stadium hosted the Division I
NCAA Men's Lacrosse Championship in 1973 and 1992 and the NCAA Division I Women's Lacrosse Championship in May 2007.
USFL
Franklin Field was also host to a
United States Football League divisional semi-final game on
June 30,
1984, between the host
Philadelphia Stars and the visiting
New Jersey Generals. The Stars defeated the Generals 28-7 behind two touchdowns from RB
Kelvin Bryant. A crowd of 19,038 took in the game on a warm, overcast afternoon.
The Stars were forced to play the game at Franklin Field because the
Philadelphia Phillies had a game scheduled at Veterans Stadium that weekend. The game featured many NFL stars in Generals RB
Herschel Walker, QB
Brian Sipe, LB
Jim LeClair, SS
Gary Barbaro, and G
Dave Lapham. The Stars featured Bryant, QB
Chuck Fusina, LB
Sam Mills, and P
Sean Landeta. The game was also broadcast nationally on
ABC Sports.
Other Events
Drum Corps International held its annual
Drum and Bugle Corps World Championships at the stadium in 1975 and 1976.
In 1997, the first-ever public concert was held at Franklin Field and featured the
Irish band
U2 during the first leg of their
Pop Mart Tour on
June 8.
From the 1990s until 2002, to accommodate the Eagles and the Phillies, whose regular seasons overlapped by a month,
Temple University scheduled several of its August and September home football games at Franklin Field, while playing the rest of those seasons at
Veterans Stadium. The stadium had also hosted the Owls several times on a sporadic basis for many years, usually when their home field,
Temple Stadium, was too small to handle the expected crowds.
In 2004, Franklin Field was home to the first
rugby league match between the
United States and
Australia. The United States led the
World Cup-holders Australia for much of the game, but eventually lost 36-24.
In Popular Culture
The 2000
M. Night Shyamalan-directed movie
Unbreakable
prominently features Franklin Field as one of the main locations in the film. The film's main character, played by
Bruce Willis, plays a security guard at the stadium.
In the
2006 movie
Invincible
, Franklin Field served as a stand-in for the demolished Veterans Stadium, images of which were digitally superimposed on some of the football action sequences.
References
- At conventions, JFK and FDR also spoke outdoors
- Before Obama, there was FDR at Franklin Field