History
The Buffalo Bills played the first thirteen years of their existence at Buffalo War Memorial Stadium in downtown Buffalo. While suitable for American Football League play, the "Rockpile" (as the stadium came to be nicknamed), was both in disrepair and deemed undersized for a National Football League team with a capacity of under 47,000. The league mandate instituted after the NFL-AFL merger dictated a minimum of 50,000 seats.
Rich Stadium opened in 1973. The construction of the stadium and its location were the source of years of litigation, which ended with a financial settlement for a developer who had planned to erect an all-weather stadium in Lancaster, New York. However, plans changed because it was not wanted to be close to Lancaster High School. The stadium ended up being built by a man named Frank Schoenle, and his construction company. In 1972, Rich Products signed a 25-year, $1.5 million deal, by which the venue would be called "Rich Stadium"; this is one of the earliest examples of the sale of naming rights in North American sports. (The name was somewhat of a compromise, after Bills owner and founder Ralph Wilson rejected the name Rich wanted to use, "Coffee Rich Park.") After the original deal expired in 1998, the stadium was renamed in honor of Wilson, after Rich balked at paying a greatly increased rights fee, which would have brought the price up to par with other NFL stadiums.
The first playoff game at the stadium was a 17–10 Bills victory over the Houston Oilers on January 1, 1989. The Bills won every ensuing playoff game at the stadium until they were defeated by the Jacksonville Jaguars on December 28, 1996.
Read more about this topic: Ralph Wilson Stadium
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every member of the family of the future will be a producer of some kind and in some degree. The only one who will have the right of exemption will be the mother ...”
—Ruth C. D. Havens, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)