USC Threat to Quit Coliseum: Unlikely, Oddly Timed
Wow. Weirdest announcement by one of L.A.'s Big Two during Rivalry Week in a long time. Like, perhaps ever.
USC released a statement Tuesday saying it is looking at a two-year lease to play its home games in the Rose Bowl, abandoning the Coliseum after 85 seasons.
Not that it's going to happen. USC quitting the National Historic Monument across the street from its campus ... to go play in Pasadena, where UCLA is the major tenant ... seems unnatural and hard to believe.
But USC school officials clearly feel as if this is a good time to put the Coliseum Commission's collective feet to the fire, just days before the biggest event of the year inside the venerable stadium, USC's football game with UCLA. Which also is crazy and nutty because it detracts from the game.
According to the story by L.A. News Group colleague Scott Wolf ...
"USC officials said the temporary move is necessary because the Coliseum has not undergone 'substantive physical upgrades or preventive maintenance' for more than 10 years 'because the Coliseum focused on attracting an NFL team that would renovate the stadium.'
"According to USC, it offered to fund a minimum of $100 million toward the repair, restoration and upgrade of the historic stadium, but the offer was rejected by the Coliseum."
Wolf goes on to quote Coliseum Commission members as denying USC ever had put a dollar figure on the renovation suggestions, and wondering why USC picked the week of the big game to go public with its complaints.
Those are fair observations.
But we also should remember that the Coliseum Commission is the infamous (and unwieldy) crew that has done nearly everything wrong running the property there (in the area known as University Park) for the past 40 years.
In this order, the Coliseum Commission (which also runs the Sports Arena) managed to lose the Lakers and Kings, Rams, UCLA, Raiders and Clippers. What once was THE place for L.A. sports has seen every single team walk away EXCEPT the Trojans. So we should keep in mind that USC isn't dealing with the most adroit crew of negotiators around. In fact, the commission has infuriated and alienated tenant after tenant.
The Coliseum is a wonderful venue in many ways. The history of the place is amazing, and the ambiance of a big-game day still can be grand.
USC has been playing there since October 6, 1923, when it staged a game against Pomona Pitzer.
The 1932 Olympics were based there, and so were the 1984 Olympics. The Rams were a huge draw after World War II. Great track meets were held there, and big high school football games. Even the Dodgers called the Coliseum home, from 1958-1961, despite the place being particularly ill-suited to baseball.
The peristile end is classic, with the Olympic cauldron and "the torsos" ... and anyone old enough to recall the 1984 Olympics remembers Rafer Johnson running up the steps at the east end to light the Olympic torch at opening ceremonies. At the opposite end of the field, the tunnel from locker rooms to field is one of the greatest entry ways in sports. The rush football teams must feel coming out of there and entering the stadium has to be amazing.
But the place is a crumbling mess, too. All you have to do is walk around to see it.
Ground was broken on the stadium in December of 1921, and it was built at a cost just under $1 million.
Now, 1921 is a long time ago, and the age of the stadium shows. In the crumbling steps and primitive facilities. (The visitors locker room is criminally inadequate.) Even the earthquake retrofits of the 1990s already look old, slipshod and tacky, with reinforcing rods sticking out of semi-recent concrete, etc.
About the only major improvement I've noticed in the 40 years I've been going there, aside from the "new" press box of the early 1990s) ... is an underground parking structure put in 4-5 years ago, a structure that helped ease the venue's historically wretched parking problems.
I wonder if Monday's media event at the Coliseum with the Dodgers, drumming up enthusiasm for an exhibition baseball game to be played in the stadium next March, pushed the USC negotiators over the top. One of those, "stop messing with others and start looking at your main tenant" sort of things.
Which comes with the additional backdrop of the Coliseum's utterly pointless pursuit of an NFL franchise, and counting on that non-existent NFL franchise to make improvements. That also must bug the Trojans.
Just isn't going to happen. No NFL team is going back to that stadium in that neighborhood.
The Coliseum needs new seating and improved access, and perhaps something resembling luxury suites, and tons and tons of renovation inside and out. Just to keep the historical monument from falling down.
(The Rose Bowl's revamp of its locker rooms, which includes a massive new (and spiffy) locker room for the Bruins must rankle the Trojans, too.)
If USC is going to foot most of the bill, it SHOULD get an ability to sublet the stadium to try to recoup some of its outlay.
Basically, USC's complaints almost certainly are legit. The Trojans are by far the most important reason the Coliseum hasn't crumbled into a state resembling that of its namesake in Rome ... and the Trojans have a right to be unhappy about what has NOT happened.
But this seems like the worst week of the year to complain about it. It's either really bad judgment ... or USC people are so exasperated that they are willing to risk the football team's attentiveness to the business of UCLA ... to focus attention on their concerns with the old stadium.
We know this: Everyone at Saturday's game will be looking, with a critical eye, around the stadium and the grounds around it more than they would have without this Rose Bowl threat being raised. That's why the announcement was made, I guess.