The scouting duties of Rams general manager Les Snead periodically took him to Los Angeles over the years, with one of his go-to stops being the Coliseum to get a glimpse of the top players at USC.
Snead couldn’t possibly have known back then he’d be a major part of the National Football League team that brought the NFL back to the Coliseum – let alone the nostalgic homecoming of the Rams, who called the Coliseum home from 1946 to 1979. But even then, Snead would catch himself soaking in the environment in between zeroing in on the players he was there to keep an eye on.
The Coliseum might be 93-years-old and offer very few – if any – of the modern amenities of the recent NFL palaces that have sprouted across the league. But it has a character, history and ambiance very few other venues can match.
It comes with hosting two Olympic Games, some of the greatest football teams in college football history, the very first Super Bowl – and two Super Bowls in all – 20 Pro Bowls, the World Series and the first four seasons of Los Angeles Dodgers baseball.
“I can remember sitting there, at a night game against Notre Dame with a full house thinking ‘wow, this is pretty cool,'” Snead remembers. “The place was absolutely electric.”
It’s an environment Snead could detect even watching on TV.
“When it starts getting cold everywhere else, and you watch an afternoon game from the Coliseum or Rose Bowl with all that sunshine and blue skies, it just sort of makes you want to be there,” Snead said.
Snead and the Rams will certainly be “there,” beginning this season as they inaugurate their return to Los Angeles with a trip down memory lane playing in the Coliseum. They’ll spend three seasons there until moving to their new stadium in Inglewood in 2019.
“It’s a pretty cool way to come back to L.A.,” Snead said.
Not to say there isn’t some work to be done to transform the Coliseum into an NFL caliber venue. Some of which are subtle alterations to appease NFL game-day necessities.
Or, as Rams head coach Jeff Fisher explained:
“I’m probably not the one to talk to,” Fisher said. “But from a coach’s perspective, to get it to the point where it’s NFL ready, there’s a lot of technical infrastructural things that have to take place because keep in mind, we’ve got coach-to-quarterback system, we’ve got replay systems and we’ve got all those things that need to go in and need to be functioning.
“Then all of our gameday sideline stuff, the tablets, all that stuff has to be all set up and requires extensive work from a wiring standpoint. Then we’re talking about some security issues, things like that, locker rooms.”
Fisher has spent time touring the Coliseum in preparation of next season, and for an L.A. kid who played safety for the USC Trojans back in the day, it’s been a thrill to say the least.
And he knows one thing: The natural grass at the Coliseum looks pretty sweet from his vantage point.
“The field looks outstanding,” Fisher said. “It’s going to be fun.”
