Miami Orange Bowl (historic)

The Miami Orange Bowl was a stadium in the City of Miami, west of Downtown in Little Havana. It is considered a landmark and was the home stadium for the University of Miami Hurricanes football team and the temporary home of the Florida International University Golden Panthers for the 2007 football season while the FIU Stadium underwent expansion. It also hosted the Miami Dolphins until the opening of then Joe Robbie Stadium (now known as Dolphin Stadium) in what is now nearby Miami Gardens in 1987. The stadium was renamed in 1959 for the Orange Bowl Classic college football game, which was played at the Orange Bowl following every season from 1937 to 1995, moving to Dolphin Stadium in 1996, which has hosted it ever since (save for the January 1999 contest, which, due to a scheduling conflict, was hosted by the Orange Bowl one final time). The Minor League Baseball Miami Marlins occasionally played games in the Orange Bowl from 1956 to 1960.

Demolition began in March 2008, and will eventually make way for a new 37,000 seat retractable roof baseball stadium that is scheduled to open as the home of the Miami Marlins (the current Florida Marlins) in 2011. The team has agreed to change their name as part of the agreement between the team, the city of Miami, and Miami-Dade County.

	Capacity		74,476
	Opened		December 10, 1937
	Owner		City of Miami
	Operator		City of Miami
	Surface		Prescription Athletic Turf
	Location		1501 NW 3rd St, Miami, Florida 33125
	Construction cost		$340,000 USD

History

The stadium was built by the City of Miami Public Works Department. Construction began in 1936 and was completed in December 1937. The stadium opened for Miami Hurricanes football on December 10, 1937. From 1926 to 1937 the University of Miami played in a stadium near Tamiami Park and also at Moore Park until the Orange Bowl was built.

The Orange Bowl was originally named Burdine Stadium after Roddy Burdine, one of Miami’s pioneers. The original stadium consisted of the two sideline lower decks. Seating was added in the endzones in the 1940s, and by the end of the 1950s the stadium was double-decked on the sidelines. The AFL expansion Miami Dolphins played their first regular season game ever in the stadium on September 2, 1966. The west endzone upper deck section was then added in the 1960s, bringing the stadium to its peak capacity of 80,010. In 1977 the permanent seats in the east endzone were removed, and further upgrades have brought the stadium to its current capacity and design. The city skyline can be seen to the east through the open end, over the modern scoreboard and palm trees. The surface has been natural grass, except for a time in the 1970s. PolyTurf, an artificial turf similar to AstroTurf, was installed for the 1970 football season. It was removed and replaced with a type of natural grass known as Prescription Athletic Turf for the 1976 football season after Super Bowl X.

Under the leadership of Hall of Fame Football Coach Don Shula, the Miami Dolphins enjoyed a winning record in the Orange Bowl against rival teams in the AFC Eastern Division. Under Coach Shula, the Dolphins were an aggregate 57-9-1 (60-10-1 including playoff contests) against the Baltimore/Indianapolis Colts (15-3), the Boston/NewEngland Patriots (15-1), the Buffalo Bills (16-1) and the New York Jets (13-4-1). The playoff results are: AFC Championship games: (1971, Miami 21, Baltimore 0); (1982, Miami 14, NY Jets 0) and (1985, New England 31, Miami 14) and AFC First Round game (1982 strike shortened season, Miami 28, New England 13).

Notable winning streaks during the Shula-era in the Orange Bowl include a 13-0 streak against the Buffalo Bills and a 15-0 streak against the New England Patriots, Also of note, the Miami Dolphins enjoyed a record 31-game home winning streak from 1971 to 1975. This 31-game streak includes four playoff wins. The Dolphins have not enjoyed the same level of success in Dolphin Stadium. While much of this lack of success in Dolphin Stadium is obviously attributable to a diminished level of talent and organizational stability, it is also widely recognized that the homefield advantage that the Dolphins enjoyed in the Orange Bowl was exponentially greater than in their newer home. This was in great part due to the atmosphere of the Bowl. The closeness of the seats to the field, along with the closed West End Zone, metal bleachers, and steel structure (and of course the team’s success and its status as Miami’s only professional sports team for so many years), gave the venue one of the loudest and most electric homefield environments in the NFL. Visiting team quarterbacks often complained to referees or were forced to call time out as their teammates could not hear them barking out the signals due to the unbearable noise, especially when the Dolphins were making a goal-line stand in the closed West End Zone. While Dolphin Stadium is much newer and cleaner and is considered one of the top facilities in the National Football League with top-notch amenities, the seats are much farther from the field, and even at its loudest, the din doesn’t come close to comparing to that of the Orange Bowl.

The Orange Bowl is also the site of the NCAA’s longest college football winning streak. Between 1985 and 1994, the University of Miami Hurricanes won 58 straight home games at the Bowl. The stadium’s home field advantage used to include a steel structure that fans would set to rumbling by stomping their feet. Recent concrete reinforcement has silenced the rumble. Still present is the advantage of the West End Zone, which has a relatively narrow radius that amplifies fan noise. The West End Zone was a factor in the Wide Right (Florida State) curse, in which the Florida State University Seminoles lost a series of close games due to missed field goals. This section was so raucous that some football announcers even confused it with the student section. In fact, the fans in this section were the working and lower middle class citizens of Miami.

In addition to football, the stadium also hosted concerts and other public events. The stadium has a regular capacity of 74,476 orange seats, and can seat up to 82,000 for concerts and other events where additional seating can be placed on the playing field.

The last professional football game to be played in the Orange Bowl took place on April 29th, 2000 and matched the Miami Tropics vs the San Antonio Matadors of the Spring Football League. The Matadors won 16-13.

President John F. Kennedy once visited the stadium.

(source .. wikipedia) reproduced under GFDL

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The ACC.com – The Official website of the Atlantic Coast Conference
NCAA – National Collegiate Athletic Association website
The University of Miami
Miami Hurricanes official website

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