Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: What is the oldest NFL stadium?
The oldest stadium in use by an NFL team is the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which opened on May 1, 1923. The Coliseum is currently used by the Los Angeles Rams. The stadium that has been used the longest by an NFL team is Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers since 1957.
The newest NFL stadium is Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, home of the Atlanta Falcons, which opened for the 2017 season. Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, home of the Los Angeles Rams, is the oldest, having opened in 1923.
, the current home of the Green Bay Packers is Lambeau Field, an 81,435 seating capacity stadium in Green Bay, Wisconsin. By the 1950s, City Stadium was seen by the NFL as too small and outdated to host an NFL team. After threats of forcing the team to move to Milwaukee, the City of Green Bay built "New City Stadium", which was funded by a voter-approved bond issue, in 1957. In April 1956, Green Bay voters overwhelmingly approved the bond issue to finance the new stadium. After the Packers founder Curly Lambeau died in 1965, the stadium was renamed to Lambeau Field in his honor. Its original capacity was 32,500 seats, although it was continually expanded from 1961 to 1995 to a capacity of 60,890 seats. The stadium was farther renovated from 2001 to 2003 to increase capacity to 72,515, while also updating various aspects of the stadium. Over 7,000 more seats were added to the south endzone in 2013 and the Lambeau Field Atrium was expanded in 2015. These renovations increased the stadium's capacity to 81,435, making it the third largest football stadium in America. Lambeau Field has been continuously ranked as one of the best stadiums in the NFL NFL. , it is also the oldest continually operating NFL stadium, with the Packers having completed their 61st season. Only the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park and the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field have longer active home-field tenures in American professional sports.
The San Francisco 49ers played at Candlestick Park from 1971 to 2013. The stadium was a sentimental fan favorite and housed all 5 Super Bowl Championship teams. It was, however, the oldest unrenovated stadium in the NFL and was beginning to show its age.
On October 13, 2015, the stadium task force presented its term sheet to the NFL. The NFL expressed concern over the proposed funding for the stadium, which included an additional $100 million from the league above its regular maximum contribution. In a letter to the Stadium Task Force, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell called the financing "fundamentally inconsistent with the NFL's program of stadium financing". He reminded the Task Force that any funds over $200 million had to first be requested and then approved by a three-quarters vote of NFL owners before those additional funds could be included in a stadium proposal, and that neither had been done.
The stadium was deemed unsuitable for National Football League play after the AFL–NFL merger. As part of a deal with Congress clearing the way for the merger, the NFL declared stadiums seating fewer than 50,000 people were not suitable for league needs. War Memorial Stadium only seated 46,500 people at its height, and could not be expanded. This led to the Bills constructing what was then called Rich Stadium (now called New Era Field) in suburban Orchard Park and vacating War Memorial Stadium after the 1972 season.
Several other sites were mentioned as possible locations for a new stadium. Then Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt had expressed interest in building a new football stadium next to Dodger Stadium (which is also near downtown Los Angeles). Angel Stadium of Anaheim was reconfigured as a baseball-only park in the mid-1990s, but there have been proposals to build a new football stadium next to it. The Dodger Stadium parking lot had been discussed by NFL owners, in private, as possibly being the best site in Southern California to build a new professional football stadium. Officials with the Dodgers and the NFL met in secret twice in 2005 to discuss the possibility of constructing a stadium and retail complex adjacent to Dodger Stadium. The 49ers' current home, Levi's Stadium, was built in the parking lot of an amusement park. After the "Boston Herald" reported the details of the plan, political pressure forced both the NFL and Dodgers owner Frank McCourt to deny that either party was aggressively pursuing the idea.
In 2005, then-Dodgers owner Frank McCourt showed interest in a plan in which a new NFL stadium would be built next to Dodger Stadium. However, city officials expressed their displeasure with his idea in part to their favoritism of the repeatedly defunct Coliseum plan. McCourt stated that his idea was suitable if the most recent Coliseum plan were to fail. In addition, the NFL was also rumored to favor the Dodger Stadium proposal to the countless Coliseum ideas in the past.In 2012, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell appeared on "Costas Live" on NBC Sports Network to discuss a possibility of football in L.A. Goodell said that he wouldn't like any team to relocate to the city. The commissioner said that if L.A. were to get a team, the league would have to expand to 34 teams. With no other non-NFL markets in the United States anywhere close to Los Angeles in size (the second-largest media market without an NFL team is Orlando, Florida, ranked #18, and even that market is within 75 miles of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers), adding two expansion teams simultaneously in Los Angeles was one solution that had been explored. The perceived benefits of such a solution included the possibility of two owners being able to share the costs for a new stadium (similar to what was done for New York's two teams), in addition, adding two teams to Los Angeles at the same time would have precluded the possibility of one team having to pay any sort of territorial indemnity to the other.
Dodgers owner Guggenheim Partners internally discussed moving the Dodgers to a new stadium at a Downtown Los Angeles site proposed by the Anschutz Entertainment Group to allow an NFL team to build a stadium at the Dodger Stadium site. Guggenheim Partners also considered allowing an NFL team to build a stadium next to Dodger Stadium.[21] The NFL eventually chose to build a stadium in the City of Inglewood.
The Miami Dolphins are a professional American football franchise based in Miami Gardens, Florida. They are members of the East Division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The Dolphins began play in 1966 as an expansion team in the American Football League (AFL), and joined the NFL as part of the AFL–NFL merger. The team has played their home games at Hard Rock Stadium, originally known as Joe Robbie Stadium, Pro Player Stadium, Dolphins Stadium, Dolphin Stadium, Landshark Stadium, and Sun Life Stadium, since 1987. The Dolphins are currently owned by Stephen M. Ross.
Angel Stadium of Anaheim, originally known as Anaheim Stadium and later Edison International Field of Anaheim, is a modern-style ballpark located in Anaheim, California. Since its opening in 1966, it has served as the home ballpark of the Los Angeles Angels of Major League Baseball (MLB), and was also the home stadium to the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League (NFL) from 1980 to 1994. The stadium is often referred to by its unofficial nickname The Big A, coined by Herald Examiner Sports Editor, Bud Furillo. It is the fourth-oldest active Major League Baseball stadium, behind Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, and Dodger Stadium. It hosted the 1967, 1989, and 2010 Major League Baseball All-Star Games.
Soldier Field is an American football stadium located in the Near South Side of Chicago, Illinois. It opened in 1924 and is the home field of the Chicago Bears of the National Football League (NFL), who moved there in 1971. With a football capacity of 61,500, it is the third-smallest stadium in the NFL. In 2016, Soldier Field became the second-oldest stadium in the league when the Los Angeles Rams began playing temporarily at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which opened a year earlier than Soldier Field.
Graham was signed to a short-term contract by the New York Jets in January 2005.
He moved to New York City and attended Jets training camp at Hofstra University, before being confirmed as the team's starting punter for the 2005 NFL season when his predecessor Micah Knorr was released. When Graham played his first NFL regular season game, (against the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium on 11 September 2005) he became the second person after Darren Bennett to play in both the AFL and the NFL (Colin Ridgeway played at AFL reserves level for Carlton), and fourth Australian NFL player. He also became the oldest rookie ever to be part of an NFL opening day roster at age 31.
Shortly after the Inglewood stadium was chosen, Roski shifted focus to Las Vegas, where what is tentatively known as Las Vegas Stadium was being proposed for the Raiders. He withdrew his involvement from the project in October 2016.
In a blog post published on February 15, 2011 in relation to the Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations with the NFL Player's Association, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell expressed a desire to return the NFL to Los Angeles. He named Los Angeles first in listing cities that needed new NFL stadiums. He wrote, "The status quo means failing to recognize the many costs of financing, building, maintaining and operating stadiums. We need new stadiums in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Oakland and San Diego."
Mandates set in the wake of the AFL–NFL merger in 1970 required that all teams reside in stadiums with at least 50,000 seats. None of the four stadiums the Patriots had used up to that point qualified, and because Boston is one of the oldest and most densely built cities in North America, there was little room in Boston for a new stadium. Rumors began to spread about a possible relocation to Tampa, Florida; these rumors ultimately never came to fruition (Tampa eventually got the Buccaneers instead).[6] In 1971 the Patriots moved into a hastily and inexpensively constructed stadium in suburban Foxborough (also known as Foxboro), on land granted by the Bay State Raceway. The team was renamed the New England Patriots in March 1971, to reflect its new location roughly halfway between Providence and Boston as well as a desire to better position itself as New England's regional NFL team (this would influence the name of the New England Whalers hockey team when they began play in 1972, like the Patriots, labeling themselves a New England team). The original choice, Bay State Patriots, was rejected by the NFL.[7][8] The stadium, to be known as Schaefer Stadium, was built at a cost of about $7.1 million in only 325 days. The stadium was one of the first stadiums in the country to be named after a corporate sponsor, as the Schaefer Brewing Company paid $150,000 for naming rights. Additionally, the town of Foxborough was one of the first in the country to assess a surtax on every ticket sold.
From the 1971 to 2001 NFL seasons, the Patriots played all of their home games at Foxboro Stadium. The stadium was privately funded on an extremely small budget and featured few amenities. Its aluminum benches would freeze over during cold-weather games and it had an unorganized dirt parking lot. Foxboro Stadium did not bring in the profits needed to keep an NFL team in New England; at just over 60,000 seats, it was one of the NFL's smallest stadiums. 
The city of Memphis would go on to host several more professional football franchises. The most notable was the Liberty Bowl's hosting of the NFL's Tennessee Oilers for the 1997 season. The plan was for the Oilers, who were to be based in Nashville once a new stadium was ready, to play two full seasons in Memphis because the city had the state's only stadium that was ideally sized for the NFL at the time. The largest stadium in Nashville at the time, Vanderbilt Stadium, seated only 41,000 people and was deemed too small even for temporary use. The state's largest stadium, Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, seated over 102,000 people, far too large to sell out in time to avoid local blackouts. If successful, it could have set Memphis up to make another bid on the expansion franchise that was to be awarded in the wake of the Cleveland Browns relocation controversy (what eventually became the Houston Texans). 
The stadium also allows other potential NFL opportunities on the complex such as an NFL, MLS, NCAA Football retail store, an NFL Network studio, the NFL Honors ceremony, NFL Films premieres, other NFL-themed events, a West Coast wing of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and NFL-themed hotels.
Without Curly Lambeau, there would be no professional football in Green Bay. With help from co-founder George Whitney Calhoun and The Hungry Five, Lambeau helped keep the NFL in Green Bay and prevented the Packers from going bankrupt on multiple occasions. There may be no stronger expression of his impact on the Packers than the name of their current home stadium, Lambeau Field. The venue opened in 1957 as the second City Stadium and was informally called "New" City Stadium for its first eight years. Just two months after his death, the stadium was renamed prior to the 1965 Green Bay Packers season to honor his contributions as founder, player, and coach. Lambeau Field has become such an iconic facility that the Green Bay Packers and surrounding community have continued to remodel the stadium, instead of building a new one. This has made Lambeau Field the oldest continually operating NFL stadium. The name "Lambeau" is so strongly tied to the stadium, that the Packers have never sold naming rights to the stadium, instead choosing to sell naming rights to the various entrance gates. During the 2003 renovation, the Packers erected a statue of Lambeau in front of the new Atrium entrance. Lambeau Street, in Green Bay's Packerland Industrial Park, is also named in his honor.
The Orange Bowl was demolished in 2008, with the site now redeveloped as Marlins Park, a baseball stadium which now serves as the home of the Miami Marlins (formerly the Florida Marlins). The Miami Hurricanes moved to Dolphin Stadium (now Hard Rock Stadium) after the Orange Bowl's closure and demolition, sharing a home stadium with the NFL's Dolphins for the second time; the Hurricanes and Dolphins had previously shared the Orange Bowl from the Dolphins' AFL inception in 1966 until the 1986 NFL season, when what would become Hard Rock Stadium opened. 
Vanderbilt Stadium thus became the smallest home venue in the NFL since several similar-size stadiums were used in 1970. (The merger agreement with the American Football League led the NFL to declare stadiums seating fewer than 50,000, such as Fenway Park, to be inadequate for league play and after the 1970 NFL season none were used for NFL games on a long-term basis.) The Los Angeles Chargers are using a smaller venue, the 27,000-seat Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California, as their home for the 2018-19 and 2019-20 NFL seasons while a new stadium in the Los Angeles area is being built for the Chargers and Los Angeles Rams, who are currently playing in the far larger Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, with opening scheduled in 2020.
The Vikings played the 2014 and 2015 NFL seasons at the stadium during construction of U.S. Bank Stadium, which required the demolition of the Metrodome. TCF Bank Stadium was the smallest stadium in the NFL by seat capacity for those two seasons. The Vikings reportedly paid $2 million for upkeep costs for those seasons. The Vikings also spent $4.5 million to upgrade the facilities to NFL standards, mainly to include heating coils under the turf. The Vikings used the north sideline (opposite the press box) in 2014-15. In early 2016, the Vikings became the first team in NFL history to not only make the playoffs while based in a temporary stadium, but also to host the game in the temporary stadium. In addition, the game also set a Vikings team record for the coldest home game, as well as the third coldest in NFL history at -6 Fahrenheit and windchill of -25. 
Giants Stadium was closed following the 2009 NFL season following the construction of what is now MetLife Stadium in the surrounding parking lot. The stadium's final event was the January 3, 2010 game featuring the Jets hosting the Cincinnati Bengals on "Sunday Night Football". A month after the game, demolition of the structure began and was completed on August 10, 2010. The New York Giants and New York Jets both moved to MetLife Stadium in 2010.
Prior to the arrival of the Browns, the stadium was briefly the home field for two other NFL teams, the Cleveland Indians in 1931, and the Cleveland Rams from 1936 to 1937 and again from 1939 to 1941. The football Indians played two home games in their 1931 season, a 6-0 win over the Brooklyn Dodgers and a 14-0 loss to the Chicago Cardinals. The team drew a crowd of around only 2,000 spectators for the September 26th game against Brooklyn and 10,000 for the loss to the Cardinals on November 8.
The Rams were founded in 1936 as members of the second American Football League and joined the NFL in 1937. They played home games at the stadium their first two seasons, before moving to the smaller Shaw Stadium in 1938. The Rams returned to the stadium in 1939 and played home games there through the 1941 season before moving to League Park for the remainder of their time in Cleveland. The team returned to the stadium one last time to host the 1945 NFL Championship Game, a 15–14 win in what was the final Rams game in Cleveland before the team relocated to Los Angeles.The only Great Lakes Bowl was held there in 1947.