Franklin Field
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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. It was once the largest two-tiered stadium in the United States. Today, the stadium seats 52,593.
The Army-Navy football game series was held at Franklin Field for many of the years between 1899 and 1935, before moving to the larger John F. Kennedy Stadium in South Philadelphia. It was also the home of the Philadelphia Eagles from 1958 until 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 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 on American soil.
Several infamous incidents occurred at the stadium while the Eagles played 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 in a Santa Claus costume and pelted him with snowballs.
In a nationally televised broadcast of the 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 commentator 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 Franklin Field's 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, but played out the remainder of those seasons at the Vet.
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.
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 the speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in which he accepted the 1936 Democratic nomination for a second term as president.
It hosted the Division I NCAA Men's Lacrosse Championship in 1973 and 1992.
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