No bad seats anymore.
For the first time in 100 years, there are no National Football League games taking place at Major League Baseball stadiums. The Cleveland Tigers of the American Professional Football Association played home games at the Indians ballpark in 1920. The Cleveland Tigers business did not survive and the American Professional Football Association became the National Football League in 1922. It was not unusual to see NFL teams play in baseball parks with baseball infields a part of the NFL gridirons. After Milwaukee elected officials in 1950 decided to put money up for a baseball park that could house an NFL team, other cities decided to build what were known as cookie cutter stadiums which could host a Major League Baseball team and with movable stands, an NFL or American Football League franchise in the 1960s. Green Bay played about half of its home schedule in Milwaukee and used the city built stadium from 1953 through 1994. Minneapolis built a stadium in 1955 with the hopes of landing both an MLB and NFL franchise. Both leagues came to Minneapolis in time for the 1961 season.
Other municipalities built multipurpose stadiums on the 1960s but Irving, Texas politicians decided to help fund a Dallas Cowboys football facility built specifically for the needs of the football business with a football friendly sightline. That started a new trend of municipal stadium building. Kansas City would erect two stadiums, one for Major League Baseball’s Royals and the only for the NFL Chiefs. Football only stadiums would be built for the Buffalo Bills, New York Giants and Detroit Lions in the 1970s. After the 1986 Tax Code Reform, more stadiums were built for baseball needs and for football needs. Nevada officials funded the construction of a Las Vegas stadium for Mark Davis’s Raiders with a 2020 opening. The 2019 Davis Oakland Raiders franchise was the last team to play at a cookie cutter park built in the 1960s.
