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Sanford Stadium is the University of Georgia's current football-specific venue, and their third home athletic field. It followed Herty Field (1884-1910) and Sanford Field (1911-1928), the latter of which NC State never visited.

Overall, NC State has a record of 0-5-1 at this field. NC State is 0-2 in ranked games, losing once when the Wolfpack were ranked, and once when the Bulldogs were ranked.

  * Non-conference games

Even though the Bulldogs had opened Sanford Field less than two decades ago, it still could not compete with rival Georgia Tech's cavernous Grant Field, which sat as many as 9,000 persons; consequently, Sanford Field, which sat about half as many persons, hosted only a single game of the historic series now dubbed Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate. Along with this imbalance in hosting came a perceived imbalance in bad breaks. This came to a head in 1927, after Georgia's team lost their final game of the season at Grant Field twelve to nothing after an otherwise-undefeated 9-and-0 season, complete with 6 defensive shutouts.

Faculty athletic chairman Steadman Vincent Sanford (for whom the preceding field was also named) immediately began to spearhead efforts to get his Bulldogs a football-specific plant, retaining the otherwise-satisfactory Sanford Field for baseball and track purposes. In February, architectural bids were sought for a 30,000 seat plant modeled after Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; from the beginning, it was expected to be located "in the ravine below Memorial Hall," taking advantage of the natural embankments. Preliminary work began in April, and construction began in earnest in May.

Work actually progressed so rapidly that for a time, it was expected some, if not all, of the 1928 football season would take place on the field. This ultimately didn't come to pass primarily because of late-stage construction delays (rain and a problematic outcropping of rock), but also because it had been hoped from the onset to get Yale as the opponent for the inaugural game. This was particularly notable for a couple reasons: one, because of Georgia football's early ties to New Haven (hence the nickname "Bulldogs"); and two, because the Elis rarely played outside the confines of the Yale Bowl, much less the South: they had not traveled south of the Mason-Dixon line but once, for a 1901 game in Annapolis against the Navy. To keep the sanctity of the dedicatory game (as well asthe field in pristine condition), Georgia's first two home games of the season were moved to Sanford Field. The $250k (a bit under $5 million in 2026) stadium sat 30,000: 18k on the north side, 12k on the south, plus another 6,000 temporary stands [1] [2].

Temporary seats continued to spangle the confines most years, remaining a common-enough fixture that, a couple decades down the line, there was some confusion as to what the permanent seating of the venue even was. Regardless, the Bulldogs had little issue filling the stands, with numbers swelling to as many as 48,400 seats. The first big improvement came in 1931, when a scoreboard was added for the first time; it was located on the east side of the field, near the field house. In August 1940, lights were installed "in the hedge that circles the field" rather than on the back of the stadium; the first night game, they debuted on October 25th, in a match against Kentucky. In 1946, the stadium was generally improved, with a new three-story press box built atop the south stands, a new scoreboard installed, and new concessions stands opened. In 1950, the north stands were finally made to match their taller cross-field brothers, pushing permanent seating to 36,000 [3] [4].

Following the mid-century expansion was a comparatively low point of Bulldog football, with nine out of fourteen seasons at the tail end of Wally Butts' tenure and Johnny Griffith's three-year run failing to see a winning record. Nonetheless, stadium upgrades continued unabated: a new electric scoreboard was installed before the 1960 season, and the following year the locker rooms, concession stands, and other amenities were revamped. Through the use of temporary bleachers, reported capacities swelled to as many as 43,672. Following a series of fairly successful campaigns, interest in Georgia tickets surged: this was compounded by the demolition of about 7,000 wooden bleachers and an increasing student body, though interest necessitated that most all of them be rebuilt [5].

Permanent enlargement was delayed until 1967, when it was announced that both sides of the stadium would have a second deck added, adding 19,640 seats, pushing capacity to 58,773 seats; the new construction cost $2,969,000 (almost $29 million in 2026) to build. The change also marked the end of the line for the seldom-used stadium lighting, which had been utilized for only six games in its over two-dozen years of service, with none of them coming after 1951. The following season, a round of general renovations were made, including mounting new scoreboards to the north and south decks, generally refurbishing the seating, and the painting of a mural celebrating "great moments in Georgia's football history" on the press box [6] [7] [8].

It was another dozen years before major work began again. First was the installation of a scoreboard with a video message board in 1979. Next was the decision to make the stadium a horseshoe. While the ability to provide additional seating was of course the main driver, a subsidiary component was the abolition of a years-long tradition: getting fans to stop watching games from the adjacent railroad trestle. Fans had watched the game from the tracks for "generations," but the practice fell under increased scrutiny during the 1979 season after a student fell and was injured. Even though it meant moving their brand-new scoreboard, it was decided to enclose the east side; work finished before the 1981 season, pushing seated capacity to 79,600, though crowds of 82,122 were averaged that season with endzone bleachers. In 1982, lights were reinstalled, allowing for night games once more [9] [10] [8].

The next round of work came in 1991, when the western side of the field was bowled in. The venue netted 4,205 new seats, pushing the venue's seating to 85,434 persons. At the same time, a new computertized scoreboard was installed; as with its (relocated) predecessor, it was placed atop the western stands. Two years later, 30 luxury sky boxes were added atop the south side of the stadium. With 24 sixteen seat boxes and 6 twenty four seat boxes, capacity was raised to 86,117; the university retained ownership of two of them, but rented out the rest. Demand for the boxes surpassed supply, so that was resolved in 2000, when 10 more suites were added to each end of the sky boxes, to make 50 total; the top four rows of sections 329-333 (on the southern upper deck) were converted into "sky club" seating, pushing seating to 86,520 persons. While that work was ongoing, a faulty drainage system beneath the stadium's natural sod was replaced. A third deck was added to the north side of the stadium ahead of the 2003 season, adding 5,500 seats (for 92,058 total), and a third round of sky boxes was added in 2004 (27 boxes were built atop the north stands), yielding a total capacity of 92,746 fans [11].

Physical renovations to the venue after that have been fairly scant, with just two modifications of note. In 2018, a new locker room and recruiting lounge was built beneath the western stands -- the work necessitated the temporary removal of a portion of Sanford's iconic field-level hedges, which were secreted away to three undisclosed farms around the southeast. (It was only the second time the stadium had ever been without the hedges; the other was in 1996, when they were removed to allow space for Olympic soccer). The other work was in 2024, when the 1929 Club opened in Sections 229-233. That, plus new suites at the 350-level, edged capacity up to 93,033. Other more minor changes include the installation of new scoreboards in 1996, 2005, 2011, and 2018 (the first of those three was particularly fiddly, with numerous failures reported), and new lights in 2019 [12].

Pictures of Sanford Stadium