The Jacksonville Jaguars are currently planning to speak with the Daytona International Speedway about potentially using the racetrack as its temporary home stadium should planned renovations to TIAA Bank Field come to fruition. The Jaguars announced their proposal to renovate their home stadium on Wednesday, a project which would end up displacing them for at least two seasons.
Complicating the issue of having to temporarily relocate the Jaguars is two-fold. First, the two nearest football-dedicated stadiums are in Gainesville and Orlando and second, that retrofitting potential options in Jacksonville to be NFL ready would be prohibitively expensive. Jaguars team president Mark Lamping acknowledged the idea as having merit.
"It would be an interesting solution, but would also require significant investment in terms of infrastructure," Lamping said, per VenuesNow.com. "It can accommodate a big crowd. It would be a little wonky, but it's worth considering. After the renovations (in 2016), it's nice."
Adding legitimacy to the idea is that playing ball games in Daytona's infield is far from unheard of. The speedway hosted four college football games from 1974 to 1975, with teams like Bethune-Cookman, Florida A&M, and Mississippi Valley State playing in the 4.5 acre infield within the trioval. In July of last year, the speedway hosted a two-day international soccer tournament in that same area.
In a statement released to NBC Sports, Daytona International Speedway president Frank Kelleher acknowledged that the track would discuss the idea of serving as the Jaguars' temporary home stadium.
"Daytona International Speedway is a world-renowned sports and entertainment venue and hosts a full schedule of events each year," Kelleher said. "As good neighbors in the Florida sports community, DIS will be speaking with the Jacksonville Jaguars to see if we can assist them with their potential upcoming facility needs around our scheduled events."
Any discussion of the Jaguars playing at Daytona would entail how the Jags' schedule would work around the track's race schedule, particularly events which overlap with the NFL pre and postseason like NASCAR's Coke Zero Sugar 400 in late August and the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona in late January. There is also the matter of the Jaguars' stadium proposal being approved by local officials in Jacksonville.
