Sun Bowl Stadium is an on-campus football stadium at the University of Texas at El Paso. It is home to the UTEP Miners football team, as well as
the Brut Sun Bowl game, held annually near the end of December.
The stadium, named for the game it hosts, was opened in September of 1963 with a win against North Texas State. The opening play was a
54-yard touchdown run by Larry Durham of the Miners. The land the stadium sits on was originally donated by the university to the city of El
Paso, who built the stadium for the school and the Sun Bowl game. Both had previously used Kidd Field, the school's current track and field
stadium, which only seats 15,000. The city had realized that the game could not expand its audience or the list of teams that it could invite without
a bigger stadium, so the Sun Bowl was built in a natural bowl lying to the west of the old stadium.
It originally sat 30,000, with only the sideline stands. The current press box was added in 1969, and the stadium reached the current capacity in
1982 with the addition of the north endzone stands and the expansion of the east stands. (The south endzone is still vacant, with the ground of
the bowl covered with the school's logos.) The school retook control of the land and stadium in 2001.
The stadium holds the unusual distinction of being the closest major American stadium to a foreign country, sitting less than half a mile from the
Rio Grande and the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez.
