Washington–Grizzly Stadium is an outdoor college football stadium in the

western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

, located on the campus of the

University of Montana The University of Montana (UM) is a public research university in Missoula, Montana. UM is a flagship institution of the Montana University System and its second largest campus. UM reported 10,962 undergraduate and graduate students in the fa ...

Missoula, Montana Missoula ( ; fla, label= Séliš, Nłʔay, lit=Place of the Small Bull Trout, script=Latn; kut, Tuhuⱡnana, script=Latn) is a city in the U.S. state of Montana; it is the county seat of Missoula County. It is located along the Clark Fork ...

. Opened in 1986, it is home to the Montana Grizzlies, a member of the

Big Sky Conference The Big Sky Conference (BSC) is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with the NCAA's Division I with football competing in the Football Championship Subdivision. Member institutions are located in the western United States in the eig ...

Division I FCS The NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), formerly known as Division I-AA, is the second-highest level of college football in the United States, after the Football Bowl Subdivision. Sponsored by the National Collegiate Athletic ...

(formerly Division I-AA). Its infilled FieldTurf playing field is below ground level at an

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of above

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardise ...

and runs in the traditional north–south orientation. The press box is above the west sideline and lights were added for the

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season.http://www.montanakaimin.com/mobile/sports/lighting-up-washington-grizzly-stadium-1.2690020 It is the largest all-purpose stadium in the state of

Montana Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columb ...

, and is the largest on-campus stadium in the Football Championship Subdivision that participates in the

playoffs The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be eit ...

. Yale's massive

Yale Bowl The Yale Bowl Stadium is a college football stadium in the northeast United States, located in New Haven, Connecticut, on the border of West Haven, about 1½ miles (2½ km) west of the main campus of Yale University. The home of the American foo ...

is the largest on-campus stadium in the FCS, but

Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight school ...

members abstain from postseason play.

History

The stadium is named after construction magnate

Dennis Washington Dennis R. Washington (born 1934) is an American billionaire industrialist who owns, or co-owns controlling interests in, a large consortium of privately held companies collectively known as the Washington Companies and, in Canada, another collec ...

, a Montanan who donated $1 million to finance the stadium's construction in 1985. game came in mid-season in 1986 (October 18), and the Griz have a record of at the venue, through the Montana has gone undefeated at home in eleven of those seasons; the Griz won all ten home games in 2004 and posted a mark six times ( 1994,

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, 1996, 2001,

Capacity and expansions

The current

seating capacity Seating capacity is the number of people who can be seated in a specific space, in terms of both the physical space available, and limitations set by law. Seating capacity can be used in the description of anything ranging from an automobile that ...

is 25,217 and it has been expanded three times, most recently in 2008 with an upper deck expansion of 2,000 seats on the east side. The original capacity in 1986 was 12,500 permanent seats on the sidelines with open grass seating behind the end zones, an approximate capacity of 15,000, weather-permitting. Permanent seating for the end zones was installed in

, which brought the seating to 18,845. Corner seating in the north end zone opened in 2003 and the most recent expansion in 2008 to the east grandstand brought the capacity to 25,217. A new attendance record was set in 2015 when

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). Th ...

and four-time defending national champion North Dakota State opened the FCS season on August 29 and drew 26,472. The previous record was 26,352, set in 2014 against

rival A rivalry is the state of two people or groups engaging in a lasting competitive relationship. Rivalry is the "against each other" spirit between two competing sides. The relationship itself may also be called "a rivalry", and each participant o ...

Montana State on November 22; both games were Grizzly victories.

Field surface

Infilled SprinTurf was installed in 2001, and replaced in 2008. For its first fifteen seasons, the playing surface was natural grass; with the addition of the artificial turf in 2001, the playing surface was renamed "John Hoyt Field." After fifteen seasons of SprinTurf, the playing surface was replaced with multi-color FieldTurf in the summer of

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. Following the installation of FieldTurf in the new softball stadium (Grizzly Field), FieldTurf pitched the university with a new football field and within a month, it was approved by the board of regents and installed.

GrizVision

The video screen ''GrizVision'', was installed in 2002 in the south end zone; at , it was one of the largest screens in an FCS football stadium and was upgraded in 2016 to a much larger screen: it features HD-quality video and measures , approximately twice the area of the old display.

Previous venues

Before Washington–Grizzly Stadium, the Grizzlies played off-campus at "new"

Dornblaser Field Dornblaser Field is the name of two outdoor athletic stadiums in the western United States, located in Missoula, Montana. Both were former home fields of the University of Montana Grizzlies football teams and were named for Paul Dornblaser, a ...

from 1968–86. Prior to 1968, Montana played on-campus at "old" Dornblaser Field from 1920–67 (both named for Paul Dornblaser, football captain in 1912, killed in World War I). The old field was at the site of the Mansfield Library. Prior to 1920, Montana played its home games at a field in downtown Missoula, near the former ''

Missoulian The ''Missoulian'' is a daily newspaper printed in Missoula, Montana, United States. The newspaper has been owned by Lee Enterprises since 1959. The ''Missoulian'' is the largest published newspaper in Western Montana, and is distributed througho ...

'' newspaper building.