TIAA Bank Field
On November 30th, 1993, the National Football League awarded Jacksonville, Florida an NFL franchise called the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Jaguars compete in the NFL as a member of the American Football Conference club’s South division. The team plays their home games at the TIAA Bank Field which is an American football stadium in Jacksonville. The stadium originally opened in 1995 as the Jacksonville Municipal Stadium and was built on the site of the old Gator Bowl Stadium that was erected in 1927. The TIAA Bank Field sits on 10 acres of land next to the St. Johns River in downtown Jacksonville.
The Jaguars aren’t the only ones to utilize the stadium though; it’s also regularly used for concerts, college football, and other events. TIAA Bank Field is also home to the annual Florida-Georgia game, which is a college football rivalry game played between the University of Florida’s Gators and the University of Georgia’s Bulldogs. The first Florida-Georgia game was held in 1915, and it has been played every season since 1926, except when there was a war-time interruption in 1943.
The stadium is also home to the annual TaxSlayer Gator Bowl, a yearly college football game held in Jacksonville and operated by Gator Bowl Sports. The Gator Bowl has been held since 1946, making it the sixth oldest college bowl. The game was initially played in the Gator Bowl Stadium until 1993. In 1994, the game was held at the Griffin Stadium in Gainesville, Florida after the Gator Bowl Stadium was torn down to build its replacement: the TIAA Bank Field. From 1995 and on, the Gator Bowl was held at the TIAA Bank Field in downtown Jacksonville.
In January of 1993, representatives from the University of Florida and University of Georgia started negotiating with Jacksonville to renew the contract to host the Florida-Georgia game. The universities’ contract with the Gator Bowl ended after the 1994 game, and the Citrus Bowl offered them a larger sum of money for the right to host the game. To counter this offer, the mayor of Jacksonville, Ed Austin, proposed a plan to renovate Jacksonville’s aging Gator Bowl Stadium.
In 2005, the stadium hosted Super Bowl XXXIX, which was the game played between the AFC champion New England Patriots and the NFC champion Philadelphia Eagles to decide the NFL champion for the 2004 season. The Patriots beat out the Eagles in a score of 24-21. Super Bowl XXXIX was the first time the Super Bowl was played in Jacksonville
Between 1997 and 2006, the stadium was known as the Alltel Stadium after the communications company Alltel bought out the naming rights. In 2010, the stadium was renamed to EverBank Field following a five-year naming rights deal with EverBank, a financial services company. In February of 2018, the Jacksonville Jaguars announced that the stadium would be renamed to the TIAA Bank Field after EverBank was acquired by TIAA, a New York-based Fortune 100 financial services organization.
The TIAA Bank Field can be found in Jacksonville’s Stadium District downtown. The Stadium district, also called the Sports Complex, contains Jacksonville’s major sporting and entertainment venues.