Why is UCF’s football stadium known as the Bounce House?

Many college football stadiums have great nicknames such as Death Valley in LSU, Happy Valley up at Penn State, or Between the Hedges at Georgia. Each school has its own fun name that students and fans alike like to call their stadium and UCF is no different.

Even though the stadium has gone through a few name changes in the past few years, it is currently called FBC Mortgage Stadium, but if you ask any student or fan on campus, they call it something else. Time and time again you will hear them call it the Bounce House, and no I don’t mean because it looks like an inflatable, because something happens when a certain song is played.

Every student, former student, and fan knows what to do when they hear Zombie Nation’s “Kernkraft 400” play at any sporting event, they know its time to jump. Now back in 2007 when UCF held their first game in their own stadium, the place went wild and actually rocked back and forth, so much that it worried people in the press box and in the stadium. However, you could physically feel the stadium bouncing thanks to the steel beams they used to build the stadium instead of concrete. 

After reinforcing the beams, the stadium rocks a little less than it did back in 2007, but you can still feel that bouncing feeling any time the stadium jumps in sync. 

Now, before the team enters the stadium, there are cameras focused on the locker room doors with a feed to the jumbotron. When fans hear Zombie Nation come on and begin jumping, the doors of the locker room begin to shake, adding to the illusion of a bounce house shaking.

Back in 2020, when UCF was in between naming sponsors, the school decided to officially name the stadium the Bounce House, giving students the name they love so much. However, since UCF found a naming rights sponsor, the official name of the stadium is now FBC Mortgage Stadium, but everyone still calls it the Bounce House.

So no matter what name is written on the side of the stadium, every true UCF fan knows that it will forever be known as the Bounce House.