Two Tenants at PayPal Park, and a Valley of Allegiances
Two soccer tenants at PayPal Park, the Spartans' old bowl, and two ACC schools an hour north: San Jose's sporting portfolio is as diversified as its economy.
San Jose's soccer address holds two tenants and one civic argument. PayPal Park, opened in 2015 hard against the airport's flight path, is home to the Earthquakes of MLS — and since 2024 to Bay FC of the National Women's Soccer League — a stadium built for the sport's intimacy: steep stands, the league's largest outdoor bar behind one goal, and the runways' departures as its skyline.
The Earthquakes' name carries the valley's sporting archaeology: the original Quakes of the 1970s NASL, George Best's brief residency, the MLS club of 1996, the two MLS Cups of 2001 and 2003, the hiatus and the return. The current club's November is the MLS offseason's front office — roster surgery after the playoffs' verdict — while Bay FC's young history is still being written in real time, the expansion club that set NWSL attendance records in its first season by treating the whole Bay Area as its parish.
Up the hill at San Jose State, the region's college game keeps its own November. The Spartans play at CEFCU Stadium — a 1933 bowl, expanded and pared across the decades, where SJSU football's modern highs, including the 2020 Mountain West championship won in a pandemic season on the road, built a program whose alumni include the game's coaching royalty. Spartan basketball opens its season across campus at the Provident Credit Union Event Center in the same weeks.
And the valley's wider allegiances complete the map: Stanford and Cal, an hour and a world away, now play their football in the Atlantic Coast Conference — the realignment era's strangest sentence, and the reason November's college calendar in the South Bay now runs on Eastern time zones and cross-country flights.
Soccer's twin tenants, the Spartans' bowl, the ACC's Pacific outposts: San Jose's sporting November is a portfolio, like everything else here — diversified, global by default, and anchored by a stadium where the planes take off over the supporters' songs.
