Opened in the fall of 1930 as Universal Stadium, the stadium became the home of the Portsmouth Spartans after the team joined the National Football League earlier that summer. Led by local businessmen, the Portsmouth National Football League Corporation raised money to build the permanent stadium. It opened on September 14, 1930, when the Spartans defeated the Newark, New Jersey, Tornadoes for their first NFL victory. Ten days later, the Spartans played one of the NFL’s first night games there against the Brooklyn Dodgers, prompting the Portsmouth Times to declare that night football had come to stay in Portsmouth. From 1930 to 1933, the Spartans compiled a record of 19 wins, 2 losses, and 4 ties at Universal Stadium. Its most famous game came on December 4, 1932, when the Spartans, with just eleven men, defeated the world champion Green Bay Packers 10-0 in what Portsmouth remembers as the Iron Man Game. In 1934, the franchise was sold and moved to Detroit, where the team became the Detroit Lions, leaving Portsmouth as the last small town in Ohio to have an NFL franchise. In August 1980, the stadium was renamed Spartan Municipal Stadium to honor the team that had played there for four years. It remains one of the oldest NFL stadiums still in use, and football is still played on its field.