Giants Stadium (sometimes referred to as Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands) was a stadium located in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in the Meadowlands Sports Complex. The venue was open from 1976 to 2010, and primarily hosted sporting events and concerts. It was the home field of the New York metropolitan area's two National Football League teams, the New York Giants (from 1976 to 2009) and the New York Jets (from 1984 to 2009). It also was the home field of two New York metro area professional soccer teams, the NASL's New York Cosmos (from 1977 to 1984) and Major League Soccer's New York Red Bulls (from 1996 to 2009).
The stadium's maximum seating capacity was 80,242. The structure was 756 feet (230 m) long, 592 feet (180 m) wide and 144 feet (44 m) high from service level to the top of the seating bowl and 178 feet (54 m) high to the top of the south tower. The volume of the stadium was 64.5 million cubic feet (1,830,000 m3), and 13,500 tons of structural steel were used in the building process while 29,200 tons of concrete were poured. It was owned and operated by the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority (NJSEA). The stadium's field was aligned northwest to southeast, with the press box along the southwest sideline.
In the early 1970s, the New York Giants were sharing Yankee Stadium with the New York Yankees baseball team, and began looking for a home of their own. The Giants struck a deal with the fledgling New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority in 1971 and broke ground on the construction of the new facility in 1972. The Giants' last full season in Yankee Stadium was 1972, as the ballpark was closed for a massive reconstruction following the end of the Yankees' 1973 season. Since their new stadium would take a significant amount of time to finish, and they could not use their home facility due to the construction, the Giants moved out of state and played in New Haven, Connecticut at the Yale Bowl from October 1973 through 1974, but won just once in twelve games there. They returned to New York for one final season in 1975 and shared Shea Stadium in Flushing, Queens, with the Yankees, Mets, and Jets. The Giants finally moved into their new home on October 10, 1976, week five of the season.
Eight years after opening Giants Stadium gained a second team as The Jets' Shea Stadium lease expired at the end of the 1983 season and team owner Leon Hess was having trouble negotiating terms of a new lease to stay in Queens. New York City was unwilling to agree to his terms and Hess decided to move the Jets to the Meadowlands permanently (the team previously played a regular season game there in 1977). Their first game in Giants Stadium was on September 6, 1984. With the Jets now playing at the stadium, the grounds crew needed to find a way to set their games apart from Giants games and make them more inviting for their fans and eventually came up with a series of green and white banners and coverings that were hung over the field-level blue walls that circled the stadium and (later) the four entrance gates outside the stadium. The Jets also called the stadium "The Meadowlands" for their games.
The sharing of the stadium by both the Giants and Jets enabled it to break a record that had long been held by Chicago's Wrigley Field. Entering the 2003 season, its 28th, Giants Stadium had played host to 364 NFL games, second only to the 365 played at Wrigley by the Chicago Bears in their 50 seasons there. The Giants' season opening game with the St. Louis Rams tied the record, and the following week the Jets' home opener against the Miami Dolphins broke it.
Giants Stadium was also home to the New York Cosmos, a professional soccer team of the North American Soccer League (1968–84), that attracted record crowds during the late 1970s. The stadium was later home to another soccer team, the New York/New Jersey MetroStars (now the New York Red Bulls) of Major League Soccer, who played there from 1996 to 2009.
Giants Stadium closed following the 2009 NFL season following the construction of MetLife Stadium in the surrounding parking lot. The stadium's final event was the January 3, 2010, game featuring the Jets hosting the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday Night Football. Demolition of the structure began a month after the game and was completed on August 10, 2010. The New York Giants and New York Jets both moved to MetLife Stadium in 2010.
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History
Giants Stadium was the first major league sporting venue in New Jersey (though the Brooklyn Dodgers had played seven home games at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City in 1956 and 1957), and its success, along with that of the Giants in the 1980s was a major impetus behind increased pride and enthusiasm among New Jersey residents.
The stadiums' modernist design was heavily inspired by Arrowhead Stadium. The firm Kivett and Myers, architects of both stadiums, specifically borrowed the overall layout, intimacy and exterior spiral ramps of Arrowhead and enhanced those features.
First year in business
Giants Stadium opened on October 10, 1976, as 76,042 fans witnessed a 24–14 loss by the Giants to the Dallas Cowboys. The Giants had played their first four games on the road that season. College football made its debut at Giants Stadium on October 23, 1976, with Rutgers University defeating Columbia 47–0 and extending their winning streak to 14 games.
Other pro football teams that have used Giants Stadium
Other professional football teams that have called Giants Stadium home over the years include the New Jersey Generals of the USFL; the New York/New Jersey Knights of the World League of American Football; the New York/New Jersey Hitmen of the XFL and the New York Sentinels (who played one game at the stadium in the United Football League's inaugural season). The 1985 USFL championship game which turned out to be the last USFL game played was held at Giants Stadium.
In the second week of the 2005 season, the New Orleans Saints used the stadium for a "home" game against the Giants because of extensive damage to the Louisiana Superdome after Hurricane Katrina. One end zone was painted in Saints colors, Saints banners were hung on the walls around the sidelines, and the Saints wore their home jerseys. The game was rescheduled to a Monday night with a special start time of 7:30 PM EDT, preceding the other scheduled game on Monday Night Football. The Giants were normally not visitors at Giants Stadium unless they were playing the Jets.
College football games
The stadium hosted college football games, including the Garden State Bowl from 1978 to 1981; the Kickoff Classic from 1983 to 2002; the New York Urban League Classic since 1981; a number of Rutgers homes games (including all their home games during the 1993 season); several Notre Dame–Navy and Notre Dame–Army games; and the Army–Navy Game on three occasions, most recently in 2002. Syracuse also played two home games at Giants Stadium during the 1979 season, against West Virginia and Penn State, while the Carrier Dome was under construction. Columbia also played some home games at Giants Stadium in 1983, due to construction at its home stadium. Temple, needing a home field due to a schedule conflict with Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, used Giants Stadium as their home field versus Penn State in September 1996. Princeton also played one home game at Giants Stadium (against Yale) during the construction of Princeton's new stadium in 1997.
Soccer at Giants Stadium
The New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League moved to Giants Stadium for the 1977 season, hosting the final game of Brazilian star Pelé on October 1, 1977. Giants Stadium remained as the home venue for the Cosmos until the league folded in 1985. Additionally, the NASL championship game Soccer Bowl '78 and Soccer Bowl '79 were held at Giants Stadium.
Seven games of the 1994 FIFA World Cup soccer tournament were held at Giants Stadium (including the Italy v Bulgaria semifinal), along with four games of the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup.
In 2003, the SuperCoppa Italiana, an annual match pitting the winners of Serie A (Italy's top division) and the Coppa Italia (Italian Cup), was held in Giants Stadium instead of in Italy because both clubs involved (Juventus and Milan) were touring the United States late in the summer, when the event is normally scheduled.
In 2005, the stadium played host to several matches in the CONCACAF Gold Cup, including the final, which saw the USA defeat Panama, 3–1 in a penalty shootout after the sides played to a scoreless draw. In 2007, it hosted the Gold Cup again featuring four group stage matches. In, 2009 the stadium hosted the final for the CONCACAF Gold Cup for a second time which saw Mexico defeat the USA 5–0.
It saw many European soccer tours, hosting games involving such major soccer clubs as Manchester United, Celtic, Chelsea, Liverpool, Barcelona and Rangers.
It also hosted England's 3–2 victory over Colombia on May 31, 2005.
The New York Red Bulls (formerly the New York/New Jersey MetroStars) of Major League Soccer played at the stadium for their first 14 seasons. They moved to the soccer-specific Red Bull Arena in nearby Harrison in 2010.
Pope John Paul II at Giants Stadium
On October 5, 1995, Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass during a rainstorm, before a crowd of 82,948, the second-largest to ever attend an event at Giants Stadium. The record was broken on September 24, 2009, with an attendance of 84,472 at the U2 concert.
Concerts
The first concert at Giants Stadium occurred on June 25, 1978, with the Beach Boys as the headliners, with the Steve Miller Band, Pablo Cruise, and Stanky Brown also performing.
The Grateful Dead played Giants Stadium 14 times between 1978 and 1995. In 2019 the Grateful Dead released the Giants Stadium 1987, 1989, 1991 boxed set.
Pink Floyd performed two nights at the stadium on 3 and 4 June 1988 as part of their A Momentary Lapse of Reason tour, which concluded the North American leg of that tour before heading to Europe. They also performed two nights on 17 and 18 July 1994 as part of their The Division Bell tour. Interestingly, these two concerts were also the last two shows of the North American leg of that tour and the last Pink Floyd concerts ever held outside of Europe.
The stadium played host to Amnesty International's final A Conspiracy of Hope Benefit Concert on June 15, 1986. The show was a sold-out, all-day event, running from noon until 11 p.m. and broadcast on MTV. The show was headlined by U2 and Sting and also featured Bryan Adams, Peter Gabriel, Joan Baez, the Neville Brothers, and the Police. Additional artists that performed included John Eddie, with Max Weinberg; Third World; the Hooters; Peter, Paul and Mary; Steven van Zandt, with Bob Geldof, Stanley Jordan, Joan Armatrading, Jackson Browne, Rubén Blades, with Fela Kuti and Carlos Santana, Yoko Ono, Howard Jones, Miles Davis, and Joni Mitchell. Spoken introductions were made by Billy Graham, Bill Bradley, Daryl Hannah, Robert De Niro, Christopher Reeve, Michael J. Fox, and Muhammad Ali. Pete Townshend was scheduled to perform, but cancelled at the last minute, when his father, Cliff Townshend, became gravely ill, which would have been his first US solo appearance. This also marked the Police's final full-live performance together, until their 2007 Reunion Tour, 21 years later.
The stadium played host to the Tattoo the Earth Tour on July 20, 2000. The show featured performances by Slipknot, Slayer, Sevendust, Sepultura, Hed PE, Mudvayne, downset., Hatebreed, Full Devil Jacket, Famous, Amen, U.P.O., Nothingface, PPM, Cold, Relative Ash, Systematic, Six Feet Under, Candiria, Lamb of God, God Forbid, Darkest Hour, Unearth, All That Remains, Dropkick Murphys, Sick of It All, Tiger Army, Converge, The Unseen, Reach the Sky, Stretch Arm Strong, Kill Your Idols, and Nashville Pussy, including the only appearance by Metallica during the tour and also featured 42 tattoo artists from Australia, Austria, France, Germany, Malaysia, Manitoba, Spain, Switzerland, and the US.
Seating capacity
The seating capacity over the years went as the following:
Changes and co-tenants
To accommodate these varied events, Giants Stadium sported various playing surfaces in its history. From its opening until the end of the 1999 NFL season, Giants Stadium sported an AstroTurf playing surface. This surface was covered by Bermuda grass sod for the World Cup in 1994, identical to that at the Rose Bowl where the other semifinal and the finals were held (so that both teams in the finals would have played on identical surfaces). The grass was removed after the World Cup, as it would have died in the New Jersey winter. The MetroStars installed a grass field with interchangeable trays each spring that was removed prior to football season, forcing the team to play the remainder of its season on the AstroTurf field used by the football teams. (When the New York Cosmos called Giants Stadium home, they played on the stadium's artificial surface and never used a grass field.)
The AstroTurf was replaced in 2000 by a system of interchangeable grass trays similar to those put in place for soccer, but was kept in place under the trays to aid in draining the field when it got wet. Over the next three years, the conditions would worsen as the season went on and the field quality was typically rated just as low as the old, hard AstroTurf had been. Giants Stadium finally scrapped the grass in favor of FieldTurf for the 2003 season, a surface that remained in place until the stadium closed.
The New York Jets left Shea Stadium and moved to Giants Stadium in 1984 after years of suffering under onerous lease terms imposed at the insistence of baseball's New York Mets. When they moved across the Hudson, many predicted the stadium would be renamed. While the Jets were attracted by the stadium's larger capacity (it held 15,000 more seats than Shea did in its football configuration), they were understandably displeased at the prospect of playing in a facility named after another team. However, under the terms of the stadium lease, changing the name of the stadium required the approval of the Giants, and they were unwilling to do so. As such, for years afterward the Jets referred to Giants Stadium as "The Meadowlands" whenever they played there.
Thanks largely to the dual occupancy of Giants Stadium by two NFL teams since 1984, it surpassed Wrigley Field (home of the Chicago Bears for 50 seasons) as the venue to have hosted more NFL games than any other in league history. The game played between the Jets and Miami Dolphins on September 14, 2003, was the 366th regular season NFL game at Giants Stadium breaking Wrigley's regular season record.
Replacement and demolition
As Giants Stadium approached 30 years of age, it was becoming one of the older stadiums in the NFL. The Jets, who were tenants to the Giants, were looking to have a proposed West Side Stadium built in Manhattan. Originally intended to be the 85,000-seat main stadium for New York's bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics, it was designed to be downsized to 75,000 seats for the Jets. However, it would have required significant public funding; progress on the project was halted in 2005 due to opposition from a number of sources, including Cablevision, who owned the nearby Madison Square Garden at the time.
The Giants then entered into a joint venture with the Jets to build a new stadium in which the two New York teams would be equal partners. The architects were tasked with designing a neutral stadium that would still embody the distinct personalities of both franchises. The Giants favored a traditional look of exposed steel framework and rusticated stone while the Jets wanted a sleek and modern look highlighted by metal and glass. With those features in mind the designers used the column/tower dynamic seen in many of Manhattan's skyscrapers as inspiration for the stadium's design.
Demolition work on Giants Stadium began at approximately 10:00 a.m. EST on February 4, 2010, at the Gate B spirals, the closest point to the new stadium. The demolition work was expected to cost more than $10 million and took approximately four months to complete. By May 10, 2010, approximately 50% of the Stadium had been demolished. On May 19, 2010, at 8:30 p.m., demolition crews pulled down the press box, the highest part of the stadium. In the early afternoon of June 28, 2010, the last section of stadium grandstand came down, leaving just two later demolished upper-level escalators standing.
Much of the stadium's memorabilia was sold to a sports memorabilia company, such as the framed pictures from the suites, all of the building's signage and a good portion of the saved bowl seats. Other property was liquidated to other NJSEA facilities such as the IZOD Center and Monmouth Park Racetrack.
Jimmy Hoffa urban legend
For some years, a popular urban legend purported that the remains of Jimmy Hoffa, whose disappearance coincided with construction of the stadium, had been buried under one of the end zones at the field. This led Sports Illustrated to suggest that this "takes on special meaning when a punter goes for the 'coffin corner.'" In a similar vein, sportscaster Marv Albert once said that a team was "kicking towards the Hoffa end of the field." The rumor was referenced in The Simpsons episode "Last Exit to Springfield", when the leader of the Springfield chapter of the "International Brotherhood of Jazz Dancers, Pastry Chefs and Nuclear Technicians" trade union is said to have mysteriously disappeared after promising to clean up the union; the body of the missing leader is then shown buried under a football field.
The rumor was tested by the Discovery Channel show MythBusters, and they were unable to find any sign of a body. Furthermore, no human remains were found during the demolition of the stadium in 2010.
Notable moments
October 10, 1976: The Giants played their first ever regular season game at Giants Stadium, a 24–14 loss to the Dallas Cowboys in front of 76,042 fans.
October 1, 1977: Soccer legend Pelé played his last game, an exhibition match between the Cosmos and Santos. He played the first half for the Cosmos and the second half for his old Brazilian team.
June 25, 1978: First concert at Giants Stadium, with The Beach Boys, The Steve Miller Band, Pablo Cruise, and Stanky Brown performing.
October 28, 1978: Rutgers beat Columbia 69–0. The Lions' humiliating defeat was the last game in one of the oldest rivalries in college football. Columbia's young coach Bill Campbell retired from coaching after the game and went on to a vastly more successful career in the Silicon Valley.
November 19, 1978: Giants quarterback Joe Pisarcik fumbled the handoff to Larry Csonka with just seconds remaining in the game, allowing Herman Edwards (later a Jets head coach) to scoop it up and run it back for a touchdown, giving the Philadelphia Eagles an improbable 19–17 win. This play would be known as "The Miracle at the Meadowlands", and helped lead to the hiring of George Young as general manager, and later Bill Parcells as head coach. Pisarcik's career in New York never recovered, and Phil Simms was drafted shortly after.
September 6, 1984: The New York Jets moved into Giants Stadium, losing their first game to the Pittsburgh Steelers by a score of 23–17.
July 29, 30 and 31, 1984: The Jacksons performed three sold-out shows during their Victory Tour with 136,000 total attendance.
July 14, 1985: The Baltimore Stars defeated the Oakland Invaders, 28–24, in the 1985 USFL Championship Game, the final game in league history.
August–September 1985: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed six sold-out shows on the final leg of their Born in the U.S.A. Tour.
In popular culture
Giants Stadium is featured in the 2008 film, The Day the Earth Stood Still, where it is destroyed by nanites.