Well, look at it this way.
You’re UCLA athletics and you’ve reportedly been operating in the red for six consecutive years, racking up more than $200 million in debt. Your football branch, the wing of the department that’s supposed to generate a lot of that revenue, it totally stinks. That team has no permanent coach or clear path to competency, let alone prosperity. It’s a tough sell, no matter where you shop it.
But hey! At least if your plan goes through, you won’t have to play football games at one of the world’s most revered sporting venues anymore.
Wait, what?
What are you doin’, Bruins?
You want to punt on your one advantage as an attraction, football-wise? You want to leave the Rose Bowl – the Rose Bowl! –one of American sports’ most venerable places of play, one of the most beautiful, a literal historical landmark – for the sterile and mostly enclosed, steel-and-concrete contraption that is SoFi Stadium, another off-campus facility that’s also a freeway drive away?
It’s such an outrageous proposition, it’s hard to know where to start.
With the facts, I suppose: On Monday, the city of Pasadena and the Rose Bowl Operating Co. filed a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order request in Los Angeles Superior Court, attempting to halt UCLA’s alleged “imminent departure” of home football games from the Rose Bowl to Inglewood.
That follows their lawsuit in late October alleging the university had “long been negotiating” a move from Pasadena to Inglewood, in breach of a decades-long agreement with the Rose Bowl, and the standing lease agreement “explicitly stating there is no option for UCLA to terminate the lease prior to its expiration in 2044.”
The italics are mine, to emphasize the ironclad and apparently prescient no-buyouts-here-buddy nature of the contract: “[A]ny attempt by [UCLA] to terminate this Agreement … would be a breach of this Agreement for which monetary damages alone would be inadequate.”
So, about those reports, per 247sports.com, that this public university wants to just pony up $60 to $80 million to break a contract with a municipality that has issued many millions more in bonds to accommodate it … good luck with that, Bruin braintrust. Actually, no – bad luck and ill fortune, I hope every argument in court gets stuffed.
UCLA’s public no-comment comment on the matter, on Oct. 30, came from UCLA’s vice chancellor for strategic communications, Mary Osako: “While we continue to evaluate the long-term arrangement for UCLA football home games, no decision has been made.”
The admission that they’re even evaluating where to play football home games was incriminating enough: UCLA’s decision-makers are really about to fumble the Rose Bowl. Where the Bruins don’t even pay rent!
I just.
I-
What?
And why? Because Inglewood is a 14 congested miles closer to campus than Pasadena? Because there are more suites to sell at SoFi and, presumably, importantly, more money to make? Because it’s newer?
OK, but riddle me this: Will students still have to get in a car or bus to get to the games? Yes? Soooo, how exactly will their experience improve?
Also, show me the suckers who are going to shell out big bucks for a luxurious box seat to watch mediocre-or-worse college football. What’s the appeal of overpaying to watch what’s essentially a shaky semi-pro team in the same building that you could instead take in the Rams or Chargers? And say the suites do fill for the Bruins – sweet, but what about the other 70,000 seats?
The problem is the football, man. Not the stadium.
Maybe, I don’t know, invest in the product?
UCLA better not think it can automatically count on its alumni to come through, on a fan base’s allegiance to the brand, those people whose traditions are being actively trampled.
And UCLA just played at SoFi, by the way. The Bruins’ 2023 bowl game against Boise State in the shiny new venue moved the dial only backward. Fewer people (32,780) attended the game than attended regular-season games at the Rose Bowl (37,098) this year.
OK, so what are the other arguments in favor of the switch?
Because here’s what I’ve got: Parking will be more expensive. And equally challenging. The tailgating experience will be completely disrupted, and much less enjoyable.
Athletes will play on artificial turf and not grass, and be more prone to injuries. The roof, the roof, the roof will block out the California sun we brag about, that UCLA uses to recruit. And surely a legal battle over home field isn’t going to help attract a great coach.
And what of the glorious views of the San Gabriel Mountains that everyone now associates with UCLA? Relegated to memory, discarded with so much else of college athletics’ lore and legacy.
Rivalries that were for so long the lifeblood of the college game are being treated as more trouble than they’re worth. Conferences are collapsing or morphing into conglomerates without any regional connection or pride. And now we can’t even expect home fields to feel like home?
As painful as it was to peace-out on the Pac-12 Conference, with the way the tectonic plates were shifting beneath the college landscape, I at least understood Athletic Director Martin Jarmond’s arguments (mostly the annual $60 to $75 million payout) in favor of moving to the Big Ten.
There also was, remember, the notion that UCLA could cash in on a bump at the gate from new Big Ten opponents’ fans, like all those Nebraska supporters who showed up among Saturday’s season-high crowd of 44,481. Those friendly, red-clad folks outnumbered UCLA’s faithful and lined up en masse to snap photos in front of the iconic Rose Bowl sign before watching their team take it to their hosts in a 28-21 victory that wasn’t that close.
And what’s with UCLA’s rush to pass on what’s left of its aura? UCLA isn’t even going to let people make plans to come savor the picturesque setting, to stop and smell the proverbial roses a few more times?
Why are they hurrying up this offensive scheme to uproot the team now, starting next season, with only one game against Washington remaining on the docket this year?
“It’s another bad look for UCLA, when they’ve already had a lot of missteps,” said Chris Power, a season ticket holder and lifelong Bruin fan who has missed only one home game since 2002 and attended his first as an infant, who named his son Cade and gave his daughter the middle name Rose.
“If this was all a way to get an on-campus stadium, everybody would be in agreement,” the 43-year-old from Garden Grove continued. “But this just feels, it feels soulless. It’s money, that’s what it boils down to. … I get the reason for it.
“But one of the best things – the best thing – about college football are all the traditions, and so many traditions have been ripped out. And the Rose Bowl is kind of the last thing we could grasp to.
“I was joking around with my wife, ‘How long until they sell the logo and become the GEICO Geckos or something?’”
To be clear: He was being facetious, UCLA. That would be a bad and distasteful idea; don’t do that – it’d be dumb. Like leaving the Rose Bowl for SoFi.