FirstBank Stadium
FirstBank Stadium (formerly Dudley Field and Vanderbilt Stadium) is a football stadium located in Nashville, Tennessee. Completed in 1922 as the first stadium in the South to be used exclusively for college football, it is the home of the Vanderbilt University football team.[4] When the venue was known as Vanderbilt Stadium, it hosted the Tennessee Oilers (now Titans) during the 1998 NFL season and the first Music City Bowl in 1998 and also hosted the Tennessee state high school football championships for many years.
"Dudley Field" redirects here. For the stadium in El Paso, Texas, see Dudley Field (El Paso).Former names
Dudley Field (1922–1981)
Vanderbilt Stadium (1981–2022)
Jess Neely Drive, Nashville, Tennessee
Vanderbilt University
40,350[1]
Grass (1922–1969, 1999–2011)
AstroTurf (1970–1998)
Shaw Sports Legion 46 (2012–present)
1922
October 14, 1922
(rebuilt 1981)
FirstBank Stadium is the smallest football stadium in the Southeastern Conference, and was the largest stadium in Nashville until the completion of the Titans' Nissan Stadium in 1999.
History[edit]
Old Dudley Field[edit]
Vanderbilt football began in 1892, and for 30 years, Commodore football teams played on the northeast corner of campus where Wilson Hall, Kissam Quadrangle, and a portion of the Vanderbilt University Law School now stand, adjacent to today's 21st Avenue South.[5]
The first facility was named for William Dudley, Dean of the Vanderbilt University Medical School from 1885 until his death in 1914. Dudley was responsible for the formation of the SIAA, the predecessor of the Southern Conference and Southeastern Conference, in 1895, and was also instrumental in the formation of the NCAA in 1906.[4]
In 1922, after a 74.2 winning percentage during the 18-year tenure of Coach McGugin, the Commodores had outgrown old Dudley Field.[4] The old field was re-christened Curry Field, in honor of Irby "Rabbit" Curry, a standout football player from 1914 to 1916, who left Vanderbilt to serve in the American Expeditionary Force to Europe in World War I and was killed while flying a combat mission over France in 1918. The football team played two games on the renamed Curry Field before moving to New Dudley Field in 1922.
New Dudley Field[edit]
There was not enough room to expand old Dudley Field at its site near Kirkland Hall, so Vanderbilt administrators purchased land adjacent to what is today 25th Avenue South, on the west side of campus, for the new facility.[4] The new stadium, the first in the South built solely for football, was christened "Dudley Field", and its capacity was 20,000. As evidence of Vanderbilt's stature in the sport at the time, it dwarfed rival Tennessee's Shields-Watkins Field (now Neyland Stadium), which had opened a year earlier and seated only 3,200.
Other team use[edit]
On September 15, 2018, while Vanderbilt was away playing Notre Dame, the Virginia Cavaliers played the Ohio Bobcats in FirstBank Stadium. The game was relocated from Charlottesville, Virginia due to the threat of Hurricane Florence.[10]
NFL use[edit]
Upon moving to Nashville, the Oilers/Titans franchise initially played at the larger Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium in Memphis while Nissan Stadium (then called Adelphia Coliseum) was under construction in Nashville. Initially, the Oilers were unwilling to play at Vanderbilt Stadium while Nissan Stadium was being built. Not only was it thought to be too small even for temporary use, but university officials were unwilling to allow the sale of alcohol.
However, dismal attendance during the 1997 season, due in part to both the unwillingness of many Nashville fans to make the trip to Memphis and Memphis fans' indifference to a temporary team after years of failing to secure their own NFL franchise, led the Oilers to play their last season under that name in Nashville at Vanderbilt Stadium, although the university forbade the franchise from selling alcohol at home games.[11]
Vanderbilt Stadium thus became the smallest home venue in the NFL since several similar-size stadiums were used in 1970. (The merger agreement with the American Football League led the NFL to declare stadiums seating fewer than 50,000, such as Fenway Park, to be inadequate for league play and after the 1970 NFL season none were used for NFL games on a long-term basis.) The Los Angeles Chargers used a smaller venue, the 27,000-seat Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California, as their home for the 2017–18, 2018–19 and 2019–20 NFL seasons while SoFi Stadium was being built for the Chargers and the Los Angeles Rams, who were playing in the far larger Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Downtown Los Angeles.
