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CEFCU Stadium

stadium at San Jose State University

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ2165358
Source-derived summary

CEFCU ('sef-kyü) Stadium, formerly known as Spartan Stadium, is an outdoor athletic stadium located in the Spartan Keyes neighborhood of San Jose, California. Owned by San José State University, the venue is the longtime home of Spartan football; it also hosts the university's commencement ceremony on Memorial Day weekend, and occasional high school football games. Known as Spartan Stadium for over eight decades, it was renamed in 2016.

CEFCU Stadium was the home of the San Jose Earthquakes (originally San Jose Clash) of Major League Soccer from the league's inception in 1996 through the 2005 season. Other tenants have included the original San Jose Earthquakes of the North American Soccer League from 1974 to 1984, the San Jose CyberRays of the Women's United Soccer Association from 2001 to 2003, and the San Francisco Dragons of Major League Lacrosse in 2008. Soccer Bowl '75 was also held at CEFCU.

During the winter and spring of 2009, the stadium's natural grass playing field was removed and replaced with FieldTurf, a new generation of artificial turf with a crumb rubber and sand infill. This improvement resulted in significant savings to the university in water use, fertilizer, seed and labor. The FieldTurf playing surface was later replaced with AstroTurf Rhino Blend in 2017. The playing field is aligned north-northwest to south-southeast, at an approximate elevation of 100 feet (30 m) above sea level.

The stadium also received significant upgrades to the scoreboard and sound system in 2011 and 2020.

Editorial summary

“CEFCU Stadium” enters the record as stadium at San Jose State University. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what CEFCU, Stadium and stadium can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2016, 1996, 2005, 1974—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around CEFCU, Stadium and stadium.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“CEFCU Stadium” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, CEFCU, Stadium and stadium provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2165358. Authority coordinates are 37.320, -121.868. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2016, 1996, 2005 and 1974.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “CEFCU Stadium”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow CEFCU Stadium primary sources, CEFCU Stadium archive and CEFCU research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “CEFCU Stadium”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from CEFCU Stadium” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.