First, a quote from the element set, as to what the coverage element is:
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant.
And also a quote from the Miller text, page 114:
Use the DC Coverage element […] when an image depicts a particular place or time period, and when place or time period are likely to be important aspects by which users will want to search, browse, and retrieve sets of related digital resources[….]
As Dr. MacCall has noted, these are images of events. These events are taking place on certain days and times at certain places. I am not a huge football fan, but I believe that users will wants to narrow their searches by year/date and by the stadium/city in which the games are taking place.
Could other elements take up the slack? Well, the Date element could hold the game date, but it will be busy holding other dates, like date of file creation and date added to collection. And Subject could hold the place, but again, it will be busy with subjects like “Football” and “Football players.” Coverage provides a clean place to which software can direct a search to filter by time and place.
Side note: Is Coverage always necessary? Well, no. This image, for example, has no discernible time and place. It obviously has one, but it’s not a vital component of the image. This dachshund nursing kittens could be in Alabama or Wisconsin or Europe. It could be the 1930’s or the 1970’s or someone’s got their Instagram filters on. While the Coverage element could be possible for this image, it could also be absent without cost.
MetaDamen 
Seems logical to me!
btw, I might want to know location aspects of dachshund rearing if I have a national mission for my dachshund repository, but it would likely have to be a prospective repository going forward in time, one that requires the recording of that information. IOW, in a topic like dachshunds (unlike football) the retrospective determination of location would be danged difficult (as you imply)!
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[…] post about the Dublin Core “coverage” element nicely addresses the “coverage” element, which, while related to the date element, […]
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I think you are absolutely correct in surmising that these football pictures need Coverage element described. An example that popped in my mind while reading your post was the very often occurrence of “neutral site” games that are played in a city or stadium that neither team regularly plays in and/or a situation like our baseball team is in right now where they are playing all this seasons home games in Hoover due to stadium renovation. Following this I could easily envision a scenario where a user know that team X and team Y played in city Z, but they do not have information on the date this occurred. Considering further that our particular set of images spans across many seasons the occurrence I’ve described above is rather likely, in my opinion, and therefore Coverage an important element to include.
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