The Jacksonville Jaguars may soon need a temporary home if TIAA Bank Stadium begins extensive renovations to bring a home venue steeped in 1995 into the 21st century. That construction is slated to take place before the team’s current lease runs out in 2029 and is ultimately subject to the approval of Jacksonville’s city council thanks to extensive public funding. It if happens, it could leave the team homeless for up to two seasons.
That means the Jaguars may need a temporary place to call their own. And while London is always happy to host for a game each season, that’s not a proper fix. Team owner Shad Khan is in the market for local venues capable of holding 50,000-plus fans as his resurgent team sets its sights on a Super Bowl.
So how about grandstands that seats more than 100,000?
Officials at Daytona International Speedway — NASCAR’s mammoth 2.5-mile Florida track — have pitched their venue as a potential host despite being a 90-mile drive south and, famously, not being a football stadium.
“Daytona International Speedway is a world-renowned sports and entertainment venue and hosts a full schedule of events each year,” Kelleher said in a statement released June 10. “As good neighbors in the Florida sports community, DIS will be speaking with the Jacksonville Jaguars to see if we can assist them with their potential upcoming facility needs around our scheduled events.”
Per the Daytona Beach News-Journal, the team’s top choices are the University of Florida’s Ben Hill Griffin Stadium or Orlando’s Camping World Stadium, though neither is a perfect fit. Each would be at least a 90-minute drive from the team’s current Jacksonville home. But team president Frank Lamping isn’t ruling out the home of the Daytona 500.
“It would be an interesting solution but would also require significant investment in terms of infrastructure,” Lamping told VenuesNow. “It can accommodate a big crowd. It would be a little wonky, but it’s worth considering.”
“Wonky” is a bit of an understatement. Hosting at a 2.5-mile tri-oval means many of the available seats would be trying to watch the Jags from a different building in downtown Jacksonville. Here’s what it looked like from the boxes when Bristol Motor Speedway — a significantly smaller (0.533 miles) oval track — hosted a college football showdown between Tennessee and Virginia Tech in 2016.
A wider shot. #Hokies pic.twitter.com/u7V2ml2v3x
— Andy Bitter (@AndyBitterVT) September 11, 2016
That’s before getting to the infrastructure of locker rooms, lights and putting together an entire NFL football field in the infield. As SB Nation pointed out in 2016, that’s *a lot.*
So yeah, Daytona is a fun idea whose execution would be considerably more difficult than hosting games at one of the other football stadiums without a two-hour radius of Jacksonville. And, again, this all relies on the Jaguars’ construction plans and the approval of public funds (which, aside, subsidizing costs for a team owner worth $11.6 billion is generally a bad idea for taxpayers!).
There are a lot of moving parts to consider before declaring Florida’s most famous racetrack a temporary NFL home field. But Daytona is officially in the mix, even if nothing is officially happening at this point. We’re only several arduous steps away from being able to sit three quarters of a mile from the 50-yard line at a Jags game.
