Rice-Eccles Stadium

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Rice-Eccles Stadium is an outdoor college football stadium in Salt Lake City, Utah, on the campus of the University of Utah. It is the home field of the Utah Utes of the Pac-12 Conference. It served as the main stadium for the 2002 Winter Olympics; the Opening and Closing Ceremonies were held at the stadium, which was temporarily renamed "Rice-Eccles Olympic Stadium".The FieldTurf playing field runs in the traditional north-south configuration, and sits at an elevation of above sea level, 400ft above downtown Salt Lake City.HistoryWhen Salt Lake City was awarded the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, it was obvious that Rice Stadium, the largest outdoor stadium in Salt Lake City, was not suitable to serve as the main stadium. The concrete, timber, and earth-fill facility had been built in 1927 and was showing its age. In 1996, U of U athletic director Chris Hill announced plans to renovate Rice Stadium into a new facility that would be up to Olympic standards. It was initially expected to take three years to completely overhaul the facility.However, in 1997, Spencer Eccles, a Utah alumnus and chairman of Utah's biggest bank, First Security Corporation (now part of Wells Fargo), announced that the George S. and Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation would donate $10 million toward the project. In recognition of this gift, the U of U received permission from the Eccles family to add George Eccles's name to the stadium alongside that of Robert L. Rice, who had funded the original renovation project to Rice Stadium in 1972. Before it was called Rice Stadium, it was called Ute Stadium, which opened in 1927 with a Utah win over Colorado Mines.