With its 70,000-seat stadium destroyed earlier than scheduled to speed up the structure of a new location, the San Diego State team will play home games in the coming spring and fall seasons at the Major League Soccer House LA Galaxy.
The Aztecs will play at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, about 110 miles north of their current home. Last month, a new $310 million stadium began last month, with the installation component of a campus expansion assignment scheduled to open in the fall of 2022.
SDCCU Stadium, formerly known as Qualcomm Stadium and Jack Murphy Stadium, housed the San Diego Chargers before the franchise moved to Los Angeles, where Dignity Health Sports Park is also located.
There is no stadium in San Diego to house the team, said athletic director John David Wicker, via USA Today:
“We’re San Diego State University, we’ll be here forever. We are very happy to build a football stadium in San Diego . . . We’re part of that community. We’re just going to run a little on the road to play football, then we’ll go back and open a phenomenal stadium and continue to expand a campus that’s wonderful for San Diego. “
The SDCCU stadium opened in 1967 and has hosted 3 Super Bowls and two World Series; The San Diego Padres played on the premises until 2004.
The Aztecs had planned to play two more seasons at the stadium before the Mountain West Conference postponed the fall football season in the spring due to COVID-19. With the pandemic underway, the resolution was taken to move the demolition of the stadium until early 2021.
The wicker concrete of the demolition of the SDCCU stadium will be used as the basis for the new Aztec stadium, which will hold up to 35,000 people.
In 2019, San Diego State was 10-3 and finished the season with a 48-11 loss to downtown Michigan at the New Mexico Bowl.