Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium

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The Gaylord Family - Oklahoma Memorial Stadium is the on-campus football facility for the University of Oklahoma Sooners in Norman, Oklahoma. The official capacity of the stadium following recent renovations is 82,112, making it the 14th largest college stadium in the United States and the 2nd largest in the Big XII Conference (behind Kyle Field at Texas A&M University). The record attendance for the stadium was set during a 2005 home game against Texas A&M with 84,943 in attendance. The stadium is also the site of Spring Commencement exercises for the University.

The stadium is a horseshoe-shaped facility with its long axis oriented north/south, with the north end enclosed and the south end open. Visitor seating is in the south end zone and the southern sections of the east side. The student seating sections are in the east stands, surrounding the 350-member Pride of Oklahoma which sits between the 20- and 35-yard lines. Until recently the Sooners' bench was also located on the east side with the students, but Bob Stoops moved the home bench to the west (shady) side after he arrived so the Sooners can take advantage of the shade in the tall shadow of the press box. It gives them respite from the sweltering August and September temperatures, which can reach over 110° F (44° C) during a game. It is a key advantage for the Sooners against teams from cooler climates or with inadequate heat conditioning.

There are two main reasons why the stadium is not a fully-enclosed "bowl" like, for example, Michigan Stadium or the Rose Bowl. First, access to the outdoor football practice fields, which are behind the south end zone seats, would have been restricted by completely enclosing the south end. Secondly, any enclosure would have forced the baseball field, which shared its outfield with the practice fields until a dedicated baseball facility opened in 1982, to shorten its left field line considerably. (See this photo, [link], which is from the same viewpoint as the current photo in the infobox on this page. The baseball field is clearly visible in the top left.)

Contents

1 Early history
2 Lights, camera, football, money
3 A 21st century stadium
4 Future plans
5 External links
6 See also

Early history

The first game played at the current stadium site was in 1923, with the Sooners prevailing over Washington University 62-7. The football field was soon named Owen Field in honor of then football coach Bennie Owen. When spectator stands with 16,000 seats were added on the west side of the site in 1925, the new stadium was named Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in honor of university students and personnel that died during World War I. (The stadium is popularly referred to as Owen Field, but in actuality the field and the stadium are two separate objects with two separate names. The correct reference is to say that a game is played on or at Owen Field in Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium.)

Permanent seating was added on the east side in 1929, and nothing else was done to the stadium for 20 years. In 1949, the north end of the stadium was enclosed, the playing area was lowered, and a running track was added around the field. The stadium capacity when completed was 55,000 and the addition of south end bleachers in 1957 brought capacity to just under 62,000 fans. AstroTurf replaced the natural grass field in 1970. The west side upper deck was added in 1975, featuring a lounge and a new press box; new scoreboards were also added at the north and south ends. The astroturf was replaced with SuperTurf and the south end zone seats were upgraded in 1980, for a total capacity of 71,187 fans. With a few exceptions, these changes took place during or shortly after the Sooners' national championship seasons of 1950, 1955, 1956, 1974, and 1975 – all high times for Sooner sports.

The north side of Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, with reflecting pool in the foreground.

Lights, camera, football, money

Up until the 1980s, the NCAA had a tight grip on television contracts for Division I-A college football games. Compared to the current plethora of college football games on television, only two (on rare occasions, three) college football games were televised each week and the schedule of games was set in stone well in advance of the season opening. In the fall of 1981, the University joined with the University of Georgia to sue the NCAA in Federal court in Oklahoma City, alleging that the NCAA's contracts with ABC, NBC, and CBS violated Federal anti-trust laws by preventing each college and conference from selling its product on the open market. The court agreed with the schools in 1982, with quick effect; individual teams and conferences could now negotiate directly with the networks to sell television rights, without NCAA interference. Less than five years later, the Sooners and the rest of Division I-A were playing seven to ten games each season on television. However, this good fortune presented a new problem for the University.

Never in its history did Owen Field, like Wrigley Field in Chicago, have any permanent artificial lighting sufficient for television broadcasts. Obviously, this meant that untelevised home games had to start in the morning or afternoon so as to be completed by dark, because the cost of leasing a set of portable television lights was too high to spend on a game that would not earn enough revenue to pay for those lights. For all televised games, portable lights were rented – but the leasing costs cut into the University's revenue, and often the portable light trucks had to stay parked on campus for three or four weeks in anticipation of the next televised game. True night games were very difficult to play in Norman because of the amount of portable lighting needed to illuminate the field adequately for spectators to see the players, much less the candlepower required for television. Prior to 1982, the University knew there would likely be no more than three games televised per season, that only one or two of those would be home games, and which games would be televised – and could plan months ahead for leasing lights.

With the successful outcome of the court case against the NCAA, more late afternoon and night games were scheduled and TV schedules changed quickly, requiring huge portable lights and their accompanying vehicles to take up space on campus while waiting for the next televised game. Finally, in 1997, permanent television lights were installed in all four corners of the stadium, along with a new south end zone scoreboard to replace the antiquated main scoreboard. The Barry Switzer Center opened just next to the south end zone in 1998 (see below).

Owen Field switched back to natural grass (prescription turf) from the aging Superturf in 1994, installing a substantial redesign and improvement to the field's drainage system in the process. Prior to the drainage improvements it was not uncommon for water to make large pools on the field during heavy rains. These two improvements, the lighting installation in 1997 and the turf switch in 1994, were the only major maintenance projects at the stadium for a period of 17 years.

A 21st century stadium

By 1999, the 75-year-old stadium was showing its age. Except for the turf and lighting enhancements, no substantial upgrade of the stadium had occurred since the press box was built 25 years earlier, in 1975. The OU College of Architecture was housed under the west stands and in the north end zone, until other facilities became available in 1990. The artificial turf on Owen Field had literally become threadbare before its replacement in 1981 and in 1994. The east side of the stadium still had the original dirt flooring underneath the stands, making for a very dusty walk into the student and visitor seating sections. Restrooms were old and inadequate; paint was peeling off external walls and the areas under the stands (the east side in particular) were dark and smelled like dust. It seemed that, along with the Sooners' football misfortunes, from 1987 to 1998, the stadium was a has-been.

Then, unexpectedly, the Sooners won the BCS National Championship for the 2000 season. The University began to get more freshman applications than it could house due in large part to the football team's success. Along with other campus improvements, a plan was quickly put in place to give the Sooners a state-of-the-art facility.

In 2002, every seat in the stadium was replaced and the north end zone scoreboard was dismantled in preparation for replacement. From 2003 to 2004, the video and audio systems were replaced, and both end zones got new video scoreboards. The west side, long ignored except for the press box construction in 1975, received restroom and concession improvements. Most importantly, a street running east of the east stands was moved, and an upper deck and suites were added to the east side, increasing the capacity of the stadium to its current figure of over 82,000.

The east side of Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium with Owen Field in the foreground. The Pride of Oklahoma is the large group in white. Visiting team fans are in the far right corner.

The north end zone entries were renovated to match the Cherokee Gothic look of most campus buildings, and other cosmetic enhancements were made to the press box. A reflecting pool just north of the stadium, that was filled in during the 1949 north end zone expansion, was restored in 2000. A new war memorial, listing the names of all Sooners killed while serving in the U.S. armed forces, was placed next to the reflecting pool.

$50 million of the $75 million cost of the stadium project was donated by Christy Gaylord Everest, current publisher of The Oklahoman and daughter of Edward K. Gaylord. This donation gave the stadium its current name.

At the south end of the stadium is the Barry Switzer Center. The facility was built in 1999 and houses the football locker room, video rooms, football coaches offices, the football conditioning center, a state-of-the-art sports medicine facility, and a large museum dedicated to the history of Oklahoma football.

The basketball coaches' offices are located in the Lloyd Noble Center, but the rest of the OU athletic coaches' offices, as well as the Athletic Director's office and OU Athletics administrators' offices, are located in the north end of the stadium in the McClendon Center.

Future plans

After the renovations in the early 2000s, the University has a large, modern stadium. OU Athletic Director Joe Castiglione has unofficially mentioned press box renovations as the next improvement to the stadium, but no plans have been released.

External links

* Satellite image from [WikiMapia], [Google Maps] or [Windows Live Local]
* Street map from [MapQuest] or [Google Maps]
* Topographic map from [TopoZone]
* Aerial image from [TerraServer-USA]