Indeed, before the Patriots arrived, numerous previous attempts at pro football in Boston had been stymied by the lack of a pro-caliber stadium.
(The Redskins left for Washington, D.C. after the 1936 season, in which they hosted the NFL Championship Game, not in Boston but at the Polo Grounds in New York City.)
[6] The site was selected when the owners of Bay State Raceway donated the land, midway between Boston and Providence, Rhode Island.
The general contractor who built the stadium was a Massachusetts-based company named J. F. White Contracting Co.[citation needed] Ground was broken in September 1970,[7] and it cost $7.1 million,[7] only $200,000 over budget.
[7] Like the majority of outdoor sports venues built in North America in the 1970s, Foxboro Stadium was designed for the use of an artificial turf playing surface.
The venue hosted numerous significant soccer matches, including six games in the 1994 FIFA World Cup.
During the final week of the 1971 season, Holy Cross moved its home game against rival Boston College to the newly-constructed Schaefer Stadium, due to a heavy snowstorm that rendered Fitton Field in Worcester unplayable.
[20] In the opening week of the 1975 season, Boston College hosted Notre Dame at Schaefer Stadium in their first ever meeting.
The facility was built in a low-cost "bare bones" manner with unexceptional architectural elements, and had very few modern amenities.
The stadium's plumbing was not designed with NFL-sized crowds in mind, which became evident when a sewage issue overflowed the restroom facilities during its first game.
Most patrons had to sit on backless aluminum benches (or like still done in the lower Lambeau Field bowl today, rent or bring in their own stadium cushions and portable chairbacks) that often froze late in the season.
Knowing that the revenue from the Patriots would not be nearly enough to service the debt, the Sullivans quietly put the team and the stadium on the market.
[44] The Sullivans' financial picture was so dire that even when the Patriots made Super Bowl XX, the team failed to bring in nearly enough money to service the debt from the Victory Tour.
Orthwein then put the team on the market, but the wording of the operating covenant required any potential buyer to negotiate lease terms with Kraft.
[citation needed] After 31 NFL seasons, Foxboro Stadium was scheduled to be demolished on December 23, 2001, the day after the Patriots' final home game.
However, the stadium would instead play host to the first season of the Tom Brady and Bill Belichick era, with the team making a run to get into the playoffs and going on to win their first Super Bowl.
The last game played in the stadium, the "Tuck Rule Game", was played in a snow storm; it resulted in a Patriots win against the Oakland Raiders, which famously featured an overturned fumble call based on the then-applicable tuck rule in the final minutes.