page_title: Venues of the 1996 Summer Olympics
section_title: Before the Olympics
hierarchical_section_title: Venues of the 1996 Summer Olympics / Before the Olympics
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Georgia Dome. English: The Georgia Dome was the site of the Final Four and National Championship in 2007. The Georgia Dome, where Lewis plays his home games.
context_page_description: For the 1996 Summer Olympics, a total of twenty-nine sports venues were used.
  Several sports venues for the 1996 Olympics were built before the 1960s as college venues. The first professional teams in Atlanta came in 1966, when Major League Baseball's Atlanta Braves moved from Milwaukee and the NFL added the Atlanta Falcons as an expansion team. In 1968, the NBA came to the city when the Atlanta Hawks arrived from St. Louis, and the NHL arrived four years later with the expansion Atlanta Flames.
  The Braves and Falcons shared Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium from 1966 through 1991, after which the Falcons moved into the Georgia Dome, playing at that stadium from 1992 through 2016. The Braves would remain at the former stadium through the 1996 season. The Hawks initially played at Alexander Memorial Coliseum, now McCamish Pavilion, on the campus of Georgia Institute of Technology before the Omni Coliseum was completed in 1972 for both the Hawks and Flames. After the 1979–80 season, the Flames left for their current home of Calgary.
  Bidding for the 1996 Games was held in 1990. Seventy-five percent of the venues used for the 1996 Games were owned by the state of Georgia.
context_section_description: Before professional sports came to Atlanta and the Southern United States in the 1960s, college sports were followed in a manner similar to that of professional sports in the New England, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwestern part of the United States. The oldest of the venues in the South used for the 1996 Games was Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama which opened in 1926 and used from 1948 to 1988 for the Iron Bowl college football rivalry between Auburn University and the University of Alabama, a game that now alternates between the two schools' on-campus stadiums. Legion Field hosted the SEC Championship Game for the first two seasons of 1992 and 1993 before the venue moved to Atlanta and the Georgia Dome in 1994 where it had remained until the closure of the Georgia Dome. Three years after Legion Field was completed, Sanford Stadium opened on the University of Georgia campus in Athens and has undergone several expansions since its opening. The Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Florida opened in 1936 and has undergone several expansions of its own. In Miami the following year, the Orange Bowl (known as Burdine Stadium until 1959) opened; the stadium served as the home of the University of Miami Hurricanes, who played in the stadium from its opening until its closure in 2007. Alexander Memorial Coliseum on the Georgia Tech campus opened in 1956.
  In 1961, the District of Columbia Stadium opened in Washington, D.C. with the National Football League (NFL) Washington Redskins losing 24–21 to the New York Giants. The Stadium (renamed as Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Memorial Stadium in 1969 in honor of Robert F. Kennedy who had been assassinated the previous June) served as home to the second Washington Senators Major League Baseball (MLB) team from 1961 to 1971 when they moved to the Dallas, Texas area the following year and were renamed the Texas Rangers which they have been known ever since (the first Senators team were in Washington from 1901 to 1960 before relocating to Minneapolis in 1961 and being renamed the Minnesota Twins, a name they have retained to this day).
  Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium (Atlanta Stadium: 1965–76) opened on April 12, 1966 with the Braves MLB franchise debuting following their move from Milwaukee after the 1965 season with a 3–2 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates. That same year in the NFL, the expansion Atlanta Falcons debuted with a 19–14 loss to the Los Angeles Rams. Fulton County Stadium (known locally) would serve as host to the Peach Bowl from 1971 to 1991 before moving to the Georgia Dome where it remained from the 1992 bowl season until 2016. In baseball, Fulton County Stadium hosted the 1972 MLB All-Star Game. The Stadium would host three World Series in the 1990s before the Olympics, losing twice (1991 to the Twins in seven games and 1992 to the Toronto Blue Jays in six games. The latter loss was Toronto's revenge for losing out to Atlanta for the 1996 Games two years earlier.) and winning once (1995 to the Cleveland Indians in six games.). The Falcons would remain at Fulton County Stadium until the 1991 NFL season, then move to the Georgia Dome the following season, where they remained through the 2016 season.
  The Georgia Dome hosted Super Bowl XXVIII where the Buffalo Bills lost 30–13 to the Dallas Cowboys. It was the Bills' second straight Super Bowl loss to the Cowboys and fourth straight Super Bowl loss overall.
  The same year that the Falcons debuted in the NFL, the Miami Dolphins made their debut in the American Football League (AFL) at the Orange Bowl. The Dolphins would join the NFL in 1970 following the AFL–NFL merger. They would remain at the Orange Bowl until the 1987 NFL season when they moved to Joe Robbie (now Hard Rock) Stadium the following year where they have remained to this day. Five of the first thirteen Super Bowls took place at the Orange Bowl, including Joe Namath's New York Jets defeating Johnny Unitas's Baltimore (now Indianapolis) Colts 16–7 in Super Bowl III.
  Following the 1967–68 National Basketball Association (NBA) season, the Hawks franchise moved from St. Louis, Missouri to Atlan
caption: Georgia Dome in 2008. For the 1996 Summer Olympics, it hosted the artistic gymnastics, basketball, and the men's handball final.
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