Vanderbilt Stadium - Vanderbilt Commodores Football

Vanderbilt Stadium at Dudley Field is a football stadium located in Nashville, Tennessee. Completed in 1922 as the first stadium in the South to be used exclusively for college football, it is the home of the Vanderbilt University football team. Vanderbilt Stadium hosted the Tennessee Oilers and the first Music City Bowl in 1998 and also hosted the Tennessee state high school football championships for many years.

Vanderbilt football began in 1892, and for thirty years, Commodore football teams played on the northeast corner of campus where Wilson Hall, Kissam Quandrangle, and a portion of the Vanderbilt University Law School now stand, adjacent to today's Twenty-First Avenue South.

The first facility was named for William Dudley, Dean of the Vanderbilt University Medical School from 1885 until his death in 1914. Dudley was responsible for the formation of the SIAA, the predecessor of the Southern Conference and Southeastern Conference, in 1895, and was also instrumental in the formation of the NCAA in 1906.[

Over the winter and spring of 1980–81, most of the Dudley Field stadium was demolished, with the remaining stands on each sideline raised ten feet through the use of 22 hydraulic jacks on each side of the stadium. The new stadium and its Fred Russell Press Box (named for Vanderbilt alumnus, former football player, and sports journalist Fred Russell), recalling Vanderbilt's naval themed-mascot the Commodore, were designed to resemble a United States naval vessel slicing through the water, and the color-scheme picked for the exterior of the stadium was battleship gray.

The stadium's maximum capacity after the 1980–81 renovation was 41,448, consisting of a single-decked horseshoe grandstand filled in with wooden bleachers from the original 1960 expansion. The project cost $10.1 million, and the Commodores celebrated a sold-out dedication by taking a 23–17 comeback win over Maryland on September 12, 1981.

To enhance the gameday experience, officials added a Jumbotron video screen in the north end zone, adjacent to Kensington Place, in advance of the Tennessee Oilers playing their 1998 home games in the facility. The stadium served as Nashville's main outdoor stadium until the completion of what is now LP Field in 1999, when the Oilers — now the Titans — moved to their brand-new facility.

The same year, in 1999, the playing surface was returned to grass, and Vanderbilt officials removed an aging bleacher section — from the 1960 renovation — from the north end zone, lowering capacity to 39,773, 2003. The bleachers from the north end zone were replaced them with a visitors' concourse that affords any fan in the stadium a field-level, up-close experience with the playing surface.