Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 01:11:00

Four NFL Hall of Famers learned their football on this field, in a stadium named not for a donor but for the student who started it all. Hughes Memorial Stadium - The Den - at 1700 East Cold Spring Lane on the Morgan State University campus in northeast Baltimore, opened on 16 October 1937 and remains one of the historic grounds of Black college football. The name honours William Alfred Carroll Hughes Sr., the 1897 alumnus who introduced football to Morgan by organising a team on a vacant lot; his son later negotiated the university's transfer from the Methodist church to the State of Maryland. The 360,000-dollar stadium opened with a 19-6 win over Lincoln University before 5,468 fans and was immediately among the finest facilities in Black college football. The dynasty years justify the reverence: coaches Eddie Hurt and Earl Banks built a program that claimed 19 conference championships and produced Hall of Famers including Len Ford, Roosevelt Brown, Leroy Kelly and Willie Lanier - teams that at their peak ran undefeated streaks against all comers and made Morgan a national name far beyond the MEAC. The facility has been kept current: a 14-million-dollar renovation in 2001 modernised the twin sideline grandstands that give the 10,000-seat bowl its shape, and a 2019 project installed a FieldTurf surface - the field is named for Banks - and a competition-grade all-weather track. Beyond Bears football, the stadium has hosted community events, high-school championships and women's football. Practical notes: game days peak at Homecoming, one of the great annual gatherings of Baltimore's Black community, with the Magnificent Marching Machine band a draw in its own right; campus lots serve the stadium off Cold Spring Lane and Hillen Road. The stadium's place in the sport's history is generational: in the segregation era, Morgan under Eddie Hurt went entire decades barely losing - the Bears claimed multiple Black college national championships - and The Den's crowds were among the events of Black Baltimore's calendar. That lineage continues through the annual battles with Howard and the MEAC rivals, games whose bands, tailgates and reunions carry as much weight as the scoreboard.