Top 10 Sports Venue Nicknames

6.19.09 8:46 pm by Alex

Sports fans have a habbit of assigning nicknames to everything. Players, coaches, even stadiums and arenas. Here are, in my opinion, the top 10 sporting venue nicknames in the U.S. along with a bit of info about each stadium (and whatever else I dug up that happened to be interesting).

A few that didn’t quite make the list: “The Dean Dome” (Dean Smith Center, Chappel Hill, NC), “The Trop” (Tropicana Field, St. Petersburg, FL), “The Igloo” (Mellon Arena, Pittsburgh, PA), “The Q” (Quicken Loans Arena, Cleveland, OH).

10. “The Vet” – Veterans Stadium, Philadelphia, PA - Some of the nicknames on this list have someone mysterious origins, but its not hard to imagine how someone came up with “The Vet”. Once home to the Phillies and the Eagles, the stadium, destroyed in 2004, was notorious for the poorly installed artificial surface, so much so that the turf earned its own nickname: “Field of Seams.” Even after the turf was redone, Baltimore Ravens’ coach Brian Billick refused to let his team take the field for a preseason game after seeing the condition, resulting in the cancellation of the game.

9. “Death Valley” – Tiger Stadium, Baton Rouge, LA – Home of the Louisiana State University Tigers, “Death Valley” is widely regarded as the loudest stadium in college football, with recorded decibel noise levels of 119 and 130. The nickname was originally “deaf valley” because of the voluminous cheering of the 92,000 fans, but over time, I was misunderstood and became “Death Valley”. Clemson fans call their stadium “Death Valley” too, but I’d give the nod to LSU because of the program’s overall reputation and recent success.

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