Sun Bowl Stadium

Sun Bowl Stadium

The Sun Bowl is an outdoor football stadium, on the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso. It is home to the UTEP Miners of Conference USA, and the late December college football bowl game, the Hyundai Sun Bowl. The stadium was opened in 1963 and has a current seating capacity of 51,500.

The land on which the stadium sits was originally donated by the university to El Paso County, Texas, who built the stadium for the school and the Sun Bowl game. Both had previously used Kidd Field, the school's current track and field stadium, which only seats 15,000. The city had realized that the game could not expand its audience or the list of teams that it could invite without a bigger stadium, so the Sun Bowl was built in a natural bowl lying to the west of the old stadium. The AstroPlay playing field runs nearly north–south (tilted about 10 degrees NW-SE) and is at an elevation of 3910 feet (1191 m) above sea level.

The stadium, named for the game it hosts, was opened in September 1963 with a Texas Western win over North Texas State. The opening play was a 54-yard touchdown run by Larry Durham of the Miners.

It originally sat 30,000, with only the sideline grandstands. The current press box was added in 1969, and the stadium reached the capacity of 52,000 in 1982 with the addition of the north endzone stands and the expansion of the east stands (The south endzone is still vacant, with the ground of the bowl covered with the school's logos.) The school retook control of the land and stadium in 2001. Also in 2001, hundreds of seats were removed as part of a re-configuration of the seating bowl in order for soccer to be played at the stadium, which lowered capacity to its current figure of 51,500.

For a short time before moving to Dudley Field, it was the home to PDL franchise, the El Paso Patriots. They now play at Patriot Stadium.

On February 2, 2007, the stadium hosted the first ever Texas vs. The Nation all star college football game. The Nation team defeated the Texas team by a score of 24–20.