Giants Stadium

Giants Stadium is the home stadium for the New York Giants and New York Jets NFL teams, and Red Bull New York of Major League Soccer. It is located in East Rutherford, New Jersey in the Meadowlands Sports Complex, which also hosts the Meadowlands Racetrack and the Continental Airlines Arena. Official seating capacity as of 2004 is 80,242.

Because the Jets play in a stadium named for another NFL team, the Jets officially refer to the site as simply The Meadowlands; that nomenclature is used on all official NFL and team game notes regarding Jets' home games.

Giants Stadium opened October 10, 1976, as 76,042 fans witnessed a loss by the Giants to the Dallas Cowboys. College football made its debut at Giants Stadium October 23, 1976, with Rutgers University defeating Columbia University, 47-0.

The New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League moved to Giants Stadium for the 1977 season and remained until the league folded in 1985. Soccer legend Pele played his last game here October 1, 1977, playing the first half for the Cosmos and the second half for his old Brazilian team, Santos.

In 1984, the New York Jets became co-tenants with the Giants.

Other professional football teams that have called Giants Stadium home over the years include the New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League; the New York/New Jersey Knights of the World League of American Football; and the New York/New Jersey Hitmen of the XFL.

The stadium has also hosted numerous college football games, including the Garden State Bowl from 1978-1981; the Kickoff Classic from 1983 to 2002; the New York Urban League Classic since 1981; and the Army-Navy Game on several occasions, most recently in 2002.

Nine games of the 1994 FIFA World Cup soccer tournament were held at Giants Stadium, along with several games of the 1999 Women's World Cup.

The largest crowd to ever attend an event at Giants Stadium was 82,948, as Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass during a rainstorm on October 5, 1995.

Concerts have also been a part of the Giants Stadium experience, as performers ranging from Bruce Springsteen to the Grateful Dead to the Three Tenors have taken the stage before appreciative audiences.

To accommodate these varied events, Giants Stadium has sported various playing surfaces in its history. AstroTurf was the original surface for the playing field. This surface was covered by sod for the World Cup. A system of interchangeable grass trays was implemented from 1999 to 2001, but was replaced by a new artificial surface, FieldTurf, in 2002.

When the New York Jets left Shea Stadium and moved to Giants Stadium in 1984, many predicted the stadium would be renamed. The Jets organization preferred not to reside in a facility named after another team. However, their requests were denied. While the stadium has a decidedly blue atmosphere, matching the Giants' team colors, when the Jets play there, the walls are covered with green banners, matching their colors. The endzones are also repainted green, with Jets logos. In mid-December, traditionally the stadium hosts a Saturday-Sunday NFL doubleheader, with the Giants playing a home game one day and the Jets playing the other. The night between the games is a challenge for the stadium grounds crew, as they have only hours to convert the stadium from one team's colors to the other. As per the NFL schedule, the Giants and the Jets play each other once every four years. In that case, there is a predetermined home team, and a predetermined away team. In those games, the "away" team gets a rare away game in their own home stadium. The Giants and Jets typically play each other every year in the NFL Preseason, and the teams rotate annually home/away.

On September 29, 2005, it was announced that Giants Stadium would be replaced with a $800 million stadium that is scheduled to be opened in 2010. The new stadium will be nearby the current stadium, which will be razed and turned into a parking lot. The New York Jets were planning a move to a new domed stadium on Manhattan's West Side sometime near the year 2010. However, with the political defeat in June 2005 of the West Side Stadium plan, the Jets ended up agreeing to share the new Meadowlands stadium with the Giants. The stadium will be built by 2010.