Franklin Field has seen its fair share of incredible sights both on and off the turf. The first televised football game was played at the West Philadelphia landmark in 1940.
In June of 1997, the rock band U2 played at the stadium.
The field that has hosted Phillies and Eagles games, as well as the Penn Relays, was also featured in the film Unbreakable.
But in the final two minutes of an Eagles-Steelers game on Oct. 11, 1959, Franklin Field was the site of a more unfortunate incident.
"I wasn't sure what was going on," said Jim Gallagher, former Eagles public relations director. "You just saw some security people or police running into the stands."
Bert Bell -- then-commissioner of the National Football League -- had a heart attack in the endzone stands. He was taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, but it was too late.
At the age 65, Bell passed away.
It was fitting that Bert Bell would spend his final moments at a football game, as his entire life was spent around the gridiron, as a player, coach, owner, and commissioner.
"He absolutely loved the game," said Bell's son Upton.
Born de Benneville Bell on Feb. 25, 1894, he grew up in an upper-class Main Line home. His father served as the Attorney General of Pennsylvania while his brother went on to become governor of the Keystone State.
Bert Bell, however, had different aspirations
"Bert was a football nut, uninterested in wealth or position," Arthur Daley wrote in an Oct. 13, 1959 New York Times column.
A gifted young athlete, Bell attended Episcopal Academy, the Delancey School and Haverford School before going to college.
Whenever the question arose of where Bell would attend university, his father, John Cromwell Bell, would invariably respond, "Bert will go to Penn or he'll go to hell."
"He loved it [at Penn] even though he hardly went to class," Upton Bell said.
In 1914 Bell joined the Quakers' freshman football team and spent the 1915 season on the "scrub" team.
But in 1916, Bell became the Penn varsity starting quarterback, while also serving as punter, punt returner, field goal kicker and a defender.
This season saw the Quakers make their only appearance in the Rose Bowl, a 14-0 loss to Oregon. According to Upton Bell, Bert was the first to throw a forward pass in Rose Bowl history.
After serving in World War I in 1918 with the 20th General Field Hospital in France, Bell returned to Penn for the 1919 season.
Bell's father, as attorney general of the state, would sit proudly on the bench for his son's games.
"In high society, college football was a big thing," Upton Bell said. "It was the thing to do."
When his playing career ended, Bell stayed at Penn as an assistant coach for nine years under John Heisman and Louis Young, and eventually left to become an assistant at Temple for two seasons.
In 1933, Bell, along with two ex-Quakers teammates, entered the world of professional football, purchasing the Frankford Yellowjackets of the NFL for $2,500.
"When he went into the pro game, he borrowed money from his mother because his father wouldn't give him money," Upton Bell said. "His father said, 'Bert, you're spending my money on something that never will make it.'"
Bell moved the Yellowjackets to Philadelphia and renamed them the Eagles.
Not only did he serve as president of the squad, but he also served as the team's coach, business manager, publicist and ticket salesman.
"Except for football, Mr. Bell was a man without a hobby," his obituary in the United Press International said. "Eighteen hours a day devoted to eating, drinking, thinking and talking football left left him little time for anything else -- and that included sleeping."
In 1940, Bell sold the Eagles and became a co-owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers. After six years in Pittsburgh, he sold his shares and was picked by NFL owners to become the league's commissioner.
As commissioner, Bell revolutionized the game.
"Bert Bell was the John the Baptist of pro football," his son said.
"He knew the problems of the league," Gallagher said. "He tried to help. He was really good at his job."
One such problem was rival leagues who would steal many of the NFL's top players.
Bell ended a four-year struggle with the All-American Conference in 1950, which cost the NFL an estimated $6 million, by absorbing the league's top three squads -- the San Francisco 49ers, Cleveland Browns and the Baltimore Colts.
The media was another area in which Bell changed the game of football.
"He knew that you can't make it without television," Upton Bell said.
Bell would schedule Saturday night games for television broadcast, which would be the predecessor of Monday Night Football.
Competitiveness within the league was also imperative to Bell, as he knew that the league would thrive only if fans thought that every team had a chance to win.
"He would schedule games with dominoes on a checkerboard," Upton Bell said. "He would pit all the strong teams against each other and all the weak teams against each other. The Einstein Theory of Relativity Bert Bell discovered for football."
Other innovations by Bell were the college draft, sudden death overtime, a crackdown on gambling and the blackout rule.
"Bell has done more for professional football than any other man." Edwin J. Anderson, president and general manager of the Detroit Lions, told The New York Times on Oct. 12, 1959.
He was inducted into the Football Hall of Fame in 1963 and the Penn Athletic Hall of Fame in 2000. He is also commemorated with the Maxwell Football Club's Bert Bell Award for professional football player of the year.
It was quite ironic when Bell died in 1959 at Franklin Field, as he had fought so hard to have the Eagles play at the historic site.
"At that time, no NFL team could play in a college football stadium, but the Eagles needed a stadium," Upton Bell said. "He said, 'If the Eagles can't get in here, then they can't survive.'"
The Eagles paid the school to renovate Franklin Field in exchange for the ability to play.
"They went [to Franklin Field] and they started drawing crowds that they never drew before," Upton Bell said.
But Bell was known for being more than just a great football mind.
"He was a beautiful man," Gallagher said. "He was a real family man."
His son also noted that his father was a great intellectual.
"He was an avid reader," Upton Bell said. "The conversation wasn't only football. He had a great interest in politics and people. He was the type of person who could have walked in and run any business."
"He was the most interesting man I've ever met," he added. "I've met presidents and everything else."
According to Gallagher, Bell's death came as a "big-time shock" to everyone in the NFL.
"His death is a great loss, I don't know how we'll replace him in the league," Green Bay Packers owner Vince Lombardi told The New York Times in 1959. "I lost a great personal friend."
"It was the worst blow I've ever had in my life," Jim Donoghue, assistant treasurer of the NFL and Eagles vice-president said to the New York Times. "This is the greatest loss professional football has ever had."
