Reliant Stadium

Reliant Stadium is a football stadium in Houston, Texas. It is the home of the NFL’s Houston Texans and is host to many international soccer matches for the USA National Soccer Team. The stadium also served as the host facility for Super Bowl XXXVIII on February 1, 2004.

	Capacity		69,500
	Opened		August 24, 2002
	Owner		Harris County, Texas
	Cost		$352 million
	Architect		HOK Sport

College Football’s Texas Bowl is hosted at the stadium yearly, and it additionally played host to the 2007 Season’s East-West Shrine Game. In addition to football, the stadium hosts the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo for three weeks in February and March each year.

The seating capacity of the stadium is 71,500. It was the first stadium in the NFL to have a retractable roof, one of two (as of the 2007 NFL season) with a retractable roof. The other is University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, home of the Arizona Cardinals. Two stadiums currently under construction will have retractable roofs: Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis in 2008, and the Dallas Cowboys New Stadium in Arlington, Texas in 2009. HOK Sports Architects and Uni-Systems (Mechanization Consultants) worked to establish this design and mechanization of Reliant Stadium, employing the fundamentals of Kinetic Architecture.

Technology

The retractable roof mechanization consists of two bi-parting large panels that part at the 50 yard line, laying over each end zone when in the resting position. Ten parallel tri-chord trusses ride on two parallel rails, each supported by a large supertruss 675 feet long. Roof operation is controlled in the stadium press box from a personal computer, containing live images of the travel path of each roof panel, as well as live feedback from all roof components throughout the operation. The roof panels are able to open or close in as little as 7 minutes, moving up to 35 feet per minute.

Professional Football

The Texans have played their home games at Reliant Stadium since their inception in 2002. The annual calendar consists of 8 regular season and 2 pre-season games, plus any playoff games the Texans might host. It also hosted Super Bowl XXXVIII on February 1, 2004. The game saw the New England Patriots defeat the Carolina Panthers, 32-29, and site of the controversial Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show.

The first game played was on August 24, 2002, as the Texans played the Miami Dolphins in their first preseason game. The first regular season game was played on September 8 of that year, where the expansion Texans defeated the Dallas Cowboys 19-10 in an upset.

College Football

College Football’s Texas Bowl and East-West Shrine Game are annually hosted at the stadium. The stadium hosted the Houston Bowl prior to the Texas Bowl’s inception and also hosted the 2002 and 2005 Big 12 Conference Championship games. The University of Houston, Rice University, and Texas Southern University each have played selected home games at Reliant Stadium.

The first-ever Texas Bowl in December 2006 featured a game between Rutgers University and Kansas State University. The final score, 37-10 (Rutgers).

Association Football (Soccer)

Reliant Stadium hosts several international friendly and club matches each year. They are generally held in the Spring and Summer before the NFL season starts. The stadium hosted CONCACAF Gold Cup matches in 2005, and in 2007. The Gold Cup matches in 2007 included Round 1 matches, and a Quarterfinal doubleheader match. The venue’s attendance record was set during a preperation match between the Mexican National Team and The U.S. Men’s Soccer Team as a crowd of 70,103 witnessed a tie between these two border rivals (2 – 2).

—————————————————

The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, with attendance approaching nearly two million visitors per year, is the world’s largest livestock exhibition as well as the world’s largest rodeo event, and requires the support of sixteen thousand volunteers.

The three-week long event is held at Reliant Park in Houston, Texas and features bull riding, livestock judging, concerts, a parade, a carnival, trail rides, barbecue and wine competitions, shopping, sales, and auctions.

It has drawn some of the world’s biggest stars and music legends: Elvis Presley, Selena, Gloria Estefan, George Strait, Jessica Simpson, and Enrique and Julio Iglesias, to name a few.

(source .. wikipedia) reproduced under GFDL

[ Anything to add? Spotted an error? Click here to improve this entry ]

Reliant Stadium website
Reliant Stadium wikipedia entry
Houston Texans website
Texans Talk Fansite

[ Anything to add? Spotted an error? Click here to improve this entry ]

Leave a comment!