So the UCLA Bruins, after 43 years of playing their football games in the Rose Bowl, up and tell the city of Pasadena that it’s been a nice run, but that these last two games of the up-and-down 2025 season will be their last ones in the hallowed stadium.
Thanks for the memories and all, and for naming the luxury boxes the Terry Donahue Pavillion, but it’s adios.
In theory, I suppose teams should play where they like. UCLA, if never a football school in the way it’s been a basketball school, nevertheless has had fine teams in the past, and it’s always been a bit weird that it plays in a stadium 21 miles from Westwood, where somebody forgot to build a big stadium a century ago, unlike practically every other major university.
But in this case there’s the matter of the University of California at Los Angeles having signed a contract saying that the Bruins will make their gridiron home in the Arroyo Seco through 2044.
That’s 19 years from now — not this December.
You don’t ordinarily like to see lawsuits between fine organizations like the Rose Bowl Operating Company and one of the great universities in the world.
But what did UCLA expect, given the binding legal agreement? A bouquet of roses and a kiss goodbye and good luck in that godawful SoFi?
That’s what the university is pretending it expected. It’s legal and comms teams are acting as if they are simply shocked that last week the city sued, with an interesting twist the legal action, as our Pasadena reporter David Wilson wrote last week: “A city of Pasadena lawsuit claims UCLA held covert meetings with representatives from SoFi Stadium with the intent to relocate its home football games to Inglewood’s Hollywood Park complex, breaching a decades-long agreement with the Rose Bowl.”
Not only, with two games left in the season, does the university casually drop the news that it’s done here — for months, it seems, it’s been negotiating with SoFi, even down to the seating charts, and, presumably, over the fact that each fall Rams and Chargers games are scheduled every Sunday, requiring a logistical stretch to have the Bruins playing there every other Saturday.
It’s true that I’m a homer on this issue. And that there’s something that just turns me off about SoFi’s brutal — if not quite Brutalist — architectural design, and by it being surrounded by acres of hardscape and a gross casino rather than by acres of trees and grass just made for a pleasant afternoon tailgate.
And, hey, Bruins — the Rose Bowl may make for a crosstown drive. But for all these decades it sure has beat the ignominy of playing at the Coliseum, deep into Trojan territory, right across the street from the USC campus.
Even if UCLA is only playing pretend-shocked at the fact of the litigation, City Hall insiders tell me that it is also wildly underestimating the amount of any financial settlement the university would owe the RBOC as a condition of breaching the contract it signed in 2014.
Its lawyers are talking what they proffer is a fair, oh, let’s say $20 million for the privilege of breaking the legal agreement.
Whereas the city of Pasadena is saying: not so fast. In great part to keep the Bruins happy, and because the old bowl is indeed in perpetual need of upkeep and upgrades to please contemporary fans, it took on $150 million in bond debt to fund renovations. And just this year the city committed to spending another $26.5 million on an upscale club lounge separate from the Donahue near the south end zone. And it’s planning to spend a total of another $200 million over the next two decades on keeping things nice. So how does, say, $300 million in compensation in order to break our deal sound, Bruin lawyers?
And that big difference in payout expectations is going to be simply fascinating to watch being negotiated.
Here’s the real reason the Bruins should stay in the Rose Bowl: It’s a real nice place for college football. As La Canada Outlook columnist Chris Erskine, a massive UCLA fan who goes to every home game, wrote to friends this week: “Bang a gong, it’s time for another party at the Augusta of tailgating sites, the Rose Bowl. This is prime time. The harvest is in, the heavy snows have yet to arrive. In fact, this is ideal tailgating weather, the long shadows of November stretching over the fairways of Brookside Golf Course.”
Barbecuing brats on those vast lawns under those oaks on a 79 degree autumn before a game is a sports fan’s dream of a venue. Plus, SoFi is still 13 miles from Westwood, UCLAns. Not exactly a stroll across the street! Then, you get there, and you are not at the Rose Bowl. You’re at SoFi. Stick with tradition.
Write the public editor at lwilson@scng.com