Legion Field
|
|
Legion Field is a large stadium in Birmingham, Alabama primarily designed to be used as a venue for American football, but is occasionally used for other large outdoor events. The stadium is named in honor of the American Legion, a U.S. organization of military veterans. At its peak it seated approximately 78,000 people for football.
Until the 1990s the University of Alabama played the majority of their home football games at Legion Field, a practice that has now ended. Auburn University has used the stadium similarly for a while, but not as extensively, for it had played some of its home games in Columbus, Georgia at one point and had enlarged its home field, Jordan-Hare Stadium, to a seating capacity roughly equal to that of Legion Field well before the University of Alabama had done so with its facility, Bryant-Denny Stadium. It currently serves as the home field for the UAB Blazers, who compete in Conference USA.
Legion Field perhaps was best-known for hosting the annual, season-ending game between Alabama and Auburn every year from 1948 to 1998. Because of Birmingham's major industry of iron and steel manufacturing, the game became known as the Iron Bowl. In 1989 Auburn moved their "home" games in the series to their own stadium. Alabama followed suit in 2001.
Legion Field also hosted three post-season college football games, the Dixie Bowl (1947-1948), the Hall of Fame Classic (1977-1985) and the All-American Bowl (1986-1990). It still hosts the championship football game for the historically black Southwestern Athletic Conference ('SWAC').
The venue also served as home field for the Birmingham Americans (Vulcans) of the World Football League (1974-1975), the Birmingham Stallions of the United States Football League (1983-1985), and the Birmingham Fire of the World League of American Football (now NFL Europe) in 1991-92. Afterward in 1995, it was the home field of the Birmingham Barracudas for their single season of play as part of the short-lived expansion of the Canadian Football League into the U.S. Later (2001), it was the home field for the single season of the Birmingham Thunderbolts of the XFL. On August 19, 2004, the University of Alabama announced that they would not be playing any further home games at the venue, leaving UAB football as the sole collegiate tenant. The city uses the stadium for occassional High School football matchups and for the annual "Super-Six" state High School football championships.
Recently, Legion Field, with a new high-tech grass surface, has been used successfully as a site for major soccer events, including matchups in the 1996 Olympic Games, the FIFA Women's World Cup, exhibition games by the U.S. men's and women's national soccer teams and, in 2005 it hosted a World Cup qualifier between the U.S. and Guatemala.
In 2004 a structural evaluation determined that the 9000 seat upper deck, installed in 1961, would need major remediation to meet modern building codes. Because the capacity of the stadium was well beyond the needs of any of its current tenants, the process of dismantling and removing the upper deck was begun in June 2005.