New Jersey did not have a major league professional team until 1976, when the New York Giants of the National Football League moved across the Hudson River into the newly completed Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands Sports Complex at East Rutherford. The NFL's New York Jets began playing their home games at the Meadowlands in 1984. The Continental Airlines Arena, located at the same site, is the home of the New Jersey Nets of the National Basketball Association and the New Jersey Devils of the National Hockey League. As New York teams who no longer play in their home state, the Giants and the Jets are scorned by some New York sports purists. When the Giants won the Super Bowl in 1987, New York's then mayor, Ed Koch, refused them the ticker-tape parade traditionally given to local sports champions on the grounds that since they play in New Jersey they are not a New York team.
The state did celebrate a championship it could call its own, however, when the Devils won the Stanley Cup in 1995. The Devils repeated their success with two more Stanley Cup victories in 2000 and 2003.
The New Jersey Nets have made a surge in the recent past, becoming one of the most successful teams in the NBA. They captured births in consecutive NBA Finals in 2002–03, falling short on both occasions, however.
The Meadowlands is also the home of a dual thoroughbred–harness-racing track. Other racetracks are Garden State Park (Cherry Hill), Monmouth Park (Oceanport), and Atlantic City Race Course for thoroughbreds, and Freehold Raceway for harness racing. Auto racing is featured at speedways in Bridgeport, East Windsor, and New Egypt. Trenton has a minor league baseball team, the Thunder, in the Eastern League. New Jersey has several world-class golf courses, including Baltusrol, the site of seven US Opens, the latest in 1993. Numerous championship boxing matches have been held in Atlantic City.
New Jersey is historically significant in the births of two major national sports. Princeton and Rutgers played what is claimed to be the first intercollegiate football game on 6 November 1869 at New Brunswick. (Princeton was named national champion several times around the turn of the century, for the last time in 1911). The first game of what we know today as baseball was also played in New Jersey: at the Elysion Field in Hoboken between the Knickerbockers and the New York Nine on June 19, 1846. Several important college games are held at Giants Stadium each fall. In college basketball, Seton Hall placed high in the rankings repeatedly in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1989 they made it to the finals, losing to Michigan by one point in overtime. Rutgers had a formidable team in the 1970s, making it to the Final Four in 1976.
Other annual sporting events include the New Jersey Offshore Grand Prix Ocean Races held at Point Pleasant Beach in July and the National Marbles Tournament in Wildwood.