Regarded as one of the nation’s most intimidating road venues, Texas A&M’s Kyle Field has been the home of the Aggie football team since 1905.

The Aggies have always been tough to beat at Kyle Field with an all-time record of 384-152-19 (70.9 winning percentage) on their home field.

Likely making Kyle Field an even tougher road venue for opponents was the $32.9 million north end zone expansion, which was completed in 1999. The formation of the Bernard C. Richardson Zone raised raised Kyle Field’s capacity to 82,589, making it the 13th-largest college football stadium in the nation.

The Zone opened at full capacity for the first time for the annual Texas A&M-Texas grudge match in 1999 and a then state-record football crowd of 86,128 watched the Aggies tally a hard-fought 20-16 victory over the arch-rival Longhorns. The stadium record has been broken six times since, and currently stands at 90,079 (9-6 win over Nebraska in 2010).

Kyle Field was named for Edwin Jackson Kyle, who served as Texas A&M’s dean of agriculture and athletic council president. Kyle donated a 400-by-400 foot area of the southern edge of campus that had been assigned to him for horticultural experiments.

The permanent seating on the east and west sides of Kyle Field were added in 1927 and the horseshoe was completed in 1929. The stadium was expanded in 1967 to include two decks of grandstands, and the third decks were added to the east and west sides in 1980. The Aggies played on grass through the 1960s, but A&M became one of the many schools that switched to artificial turf in the early 1970s. Grass returned to Kyle Field in 1996 and the Aggies currently play on grass.

The most recent improvement was the “12th Man TV,” which is the huge video board in the south endzone. The 3,954 square-foot screen is the second-largest in collegiate sports and measures 54-by-74 feet. Included in the project, which was completed prior to the 2006 season, were 1,130 feet of ribbon board and a concert-quality sound system.

In April of 2012, it was announced that Texas A&M University and the 12th Man Foundation engaged Populous to lead the design study phase for the renovation and redevelopment of Kyle Field, recognized as the nation’s top college football gameday experience and “Home of the 12th Man.”

On May 1, 2013, the Texas A&M Board of Regents approved a $450 million renovation of the famed stadium, to begin following the 2013 season and be completed prior to the 2015 campaign. More information can be found online at www.kylefield.com.