History
The stadium is named after Clarence D. Martin, the governor of the state of Washington from 1933–41, and a former mayor of Cheney, near Spokane and ironically, a graduate of the University of Washington. Martin Stadium opened on September 30, 1972, with a disappointing 19-point loss to Utah, then a member of the WAC, with 20,600 in attendance. Two and a half years had passed since its predecessor, the wooden Rogers Field, was significantly damaged by fire, a suspected case of arson. The WSU Cougars played all of their home games at Joe Albi Stadium in Spokane in 1970 and 1971.
As of 2006, the stadium has a seating capacity of 35,117. Since the renovation of Reser Stadium at Oregon State and the addition of Utah's Rice-Eccles Stadium to the Conference, Martin Stadium has fallen to last in seating capacity among Pac-12 football stadiums. The current attendance record was set during the championship year of 1997, when WSU beat Stanford in front of 40,306 fans on November 15. (The '97 Cougar team won the Apple Cup in Seattle the following week to win the Pac-10, and played in the Rose Bowl for the first time in 67 years.) Despite the relatively small size of Martin Stadium, it has one of the highest ratios of seating capacity to population base; almost 1.6 seats per every citizen in the city of Pullman, and a seat for everyone in Whitman County.
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