New Jersey: Home of New Stadiums

Things have been quite busy in The Garden State as of late! The New York Red Bulls opened their brand new soccer-specific stadium recently, and today was the 'soft-opening' of the New Meadowlands with a lacrosse triple-header.

The Red Bulls hosted the Chicago Fire in their first Major League Soccer game March 27 and the reviews are positive. The New York Times had a nice animated infographic on the stadium. You can check it out here.

Just up the expressway (sorry, I don't have the exit number), New Meadowlands stadium opened today with three lacrosse games. I don't have any quality photos yet, but here is a nice video about the stadium.

Discussing the inside of the new Meadowlands Stadium

Next sporting event there will be a soccer friendly between Mexico and Ecuador.

Outside New Jersey, tomorrow, Sunday April 11 will see out Texas Stadium. It hosted it's first Cowboys game October of 1971, nearly 40 years ago. I'll post some video of the implosion this week.

Until next time.

New Meadowlands

2010 will see the opening of the new stadium for the Giants and Jets. Construction is nearing completition so the teams invited some long time season ticket holders to check it out. The stadium uses FieldTurf and the fans were given some infill to sprinkle around.

Each team will have their own custom end zone, but will have a midfield logo as well. You can see the space for it in the picture above.

The capacity is increasing by 2,500 seats but the upper deck will be somewhat higher because of the addition of a bunch of luxury suites. The concourses will be wider as well. The seats will not be Giant blue this time, but will be three different shades of gray.

There will be four large scoreboard/screens, one in each corner of the stadium. Naming rights haven't been announced.

All in all, it looks pretty spiffy.

Read more about it:

• www.northjersey.com
• Star-Ledger
• press release

Until next time!