Hughes Stadium is located on the eastern portion of the Sacramento City College campus. The Union Pacific railroad tracks are to the east and Sutterville Road is to the south; its bridge over the tracks is visible from the western seats. The City College station of Sacramento Regional Transit District's Blue Line is to the northeast, and the stadium's parking lots are to the northwest and northeast. The football field has a near north-south alignment, but slightly northwest-southeast. The open end of the U-shaped grandstand is to the south, with the scoreboard. The elevation of the field is approximately above sea level.
Former NFL Europe football team the Sacramento Surge, the only American team to ever win the World Bowl, played its inaugural season at Hughes Stadium in 1991, before relocating to Hornet Stadium on the Sacramento State University campus in 1992. The Sacramento Surge played five home games at Hughes Stadium, with ticket prices ranging from $40 to $100. The Sacramento Surge, which played in the World League of American Football in 1991 and 1992, featured many notable football stars. The team was coached by Kay Stephenson, former Buffalo Bills quarterback and head coach, with Charlie Sumner as the defensive coordinator and Jim Haslett as the defensive assistant coach. Mike Keller served as General Manager, while Special Projects was led by Jack Youngblood, who also partnered with Joe Starkey and Ronnie Lott on the Surge radio broadcasts KRAK. Future professional wrestlerBill Goldberg also played for the team. In 1992, the Surge played in the World Bowl. The Surge won the game, 21–17, behind quarterback David Archer's MVP performance. The game would be the only World Bowl involving two North American-based WLAF teams, as well as the only World Bowl played on North American soil. The Surge was owned by Fred Anderson, who, upon the WLAF going on hiatus after the 1992 season, continued Sacramento's professional football presence by forming the Sacramento Gold Miners, which played in the Canadian Football League for three years, albeit at Hornet Stadium.
Though Sacramento State and UC Davis traditionally switched stadiums for the annual Causeway Classic football game, Hughes Stadium was used as a third-party venue for several games in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and last in 2002. It was the host of the famous "mud bowl" in 2000, where wind and rain was so strong that a UC Davis punt actually flew backwards during the game.
Pig Bowl
For many years the "Pig Bowl" was played at Hughes Stadium, an annual football game between police officers. The teams were composed of the Sacramento City Police Officers and the Sacramento County Sheriff's Deputies, and these games were mostly played in the 1970s.
The Sacramento Solons, a Triple-AMinor League Baseball team affiliated with the Milwaukee Brewers played three seasons in Hughes Stadium from 1974 to 1976. In 1976, the Solons' affiliation changed to the Texas Rangers. As a football and track stadium, the field was expectedly unsuitable for baseball, with a left field foul line reportedly at just, or 17 feet shorter than the minimum requirement of, but baseballs hit over the high screen were still counted as home runs. , though somewhat exaggerated due to the zoom lens, provides a sense of the closeness of the left field area.
The expansion USL Pro soccer club Sacramento Republic FC played the first few home games of 2014 at Hughes Stadium, where their per-game attendance dwarfed that of the rest of the league, and where they recorded three sellouts. The team left Hughes in June 2014 for Bonney Field, a newly built facility in Cal Expo with a full-sized soccer field and lower capacity.
