Tom Braly Municipal Stadium is a 14,215-seat

stadium A stadium ( : stadiums or stadia) is a place or venue for (mostly) outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a tiered structure designed to allow spectators to stand o ...

Florence, Alabama Florence is a city in, and the county seat of, Lauderdale County, Alabama, United States, in the state's northwestern corner. It is situated along the Tennessee River and is home to the University of North Alabama, the oldest college in the st ...

. It is primarily used for

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

, and is the home field of the

University of North Alabama The University of North Alabama (UNA) is a public university in Florence, Alabama. It is the state's oldest public university. Occupying a campus in a residential section of Florence, UNA is located within a four-city area that also includes ...

Lions and the Florence High School Falcons. It also hosted the

NCAA Division II Football Championship The NCAA Division II Football Championship is an American college football tournament played annually to determine a champion at the NCAA Division II level. It was first held in 1973, as a single-elimination tournament with eight teams. The tourna ...

games from 1986–2013, which were broadcast on

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%). The ...

. UNA holds a 252-114-8 record at Braly Stadium. It has also hosted 30 of UNA's 47 Division II Playoff games.

Name

The stadium is a block east of the university campus and adjacent to the Florence Middle School. The middle school was formerly Coffee High School, but was transformed in 2004 when Florence's two public high schools merged. Braly is named for Thomas Braly, Jr., a Coffee High School coach who was principal of the school from 1945 until his death in 1963.

Facilities

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 ...

has increased by 6,200 seats since 1980 (5,000 in 1980 and 1,200 in 1998). The original playing surface featured a sand foundation that enabled the field to withstand six inches (152 mm) of rain at one time without altering the footing; however, that surface was replaced with ProGrass synthetic turf during the summer of 2010. Other renovations include a $175,000 scoreboard with a message center installed in 1995 and a 1998 renovation that doubled the working press area as well as provided additional restrooms and viewing booths for game administration. The 1995 scoreboard was replaced in 2010 with a $57,000 LED based scoreboard along with a new elevator to the press box and a resealing of the running track around the field. The new three-level press box consists of a first level that seats up to 50 sportswriters. The second level has areas for coaching staffs from competing schools, the public address announcer, the clock operator, the stadium manager, and also provides space for radio crews from both home and visiting teams. The third floor is used by television and film crews.

References

{{Alabama college football venues College football venues North Alabama Lions football American football venues in Alabama North Alabama Lions sports venues Buildings and structures in Florence, Alabama High school football venues in the United States 1949 establishments in Alabama Sports venues completed in 1949