When I worked at UCLA (~’94-’03) I recall the school year didn’t start until late September. Students of that era also said it was hard to schlepp to Pasadena since maintaining a car in Westwood is difficult.
The Rose Bowl, where UCLA plays football, is approximately 30 miles from campus. It makes sense it would be 2/3 empty for meaningless games. But you know that some admin is lobbying for the creation of an on campus football stadium costing in excess of $500 million. Don’t sneer, that’s actually been proposed….
I don’t remember any administration proposals for an on campus football stadium at UCLA during my time there (or since.) They did redo Pauley Pavilion and have built some kind of fancy conference center.
…”Throughout the years, students at UCLA have managed to live their lives with football games being far away from home – after all, it means not having to pay for a new stadium.”…
@Ravi, you don’t remember, but my dad did. He was a UCLA alum, former Bruin baseball player, and stayed in touch with the AD. It might not have hit the Times, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t proposed. The on campus stadium was a highly unpopular notion, but it would have been a windfall for Wall Street bond palaces. Fortunately, apart from a few flacks, the idea was DOA, just like getting a football team at UCI….
Thing is about UCLA football, they played their home games at the Los Angeles Colluseum, which is the home stadium of their arch rivals, USC. That was the arrangement up until 1983. I don’t know for sure how the payment schedule worked, but I believe UCLA was forced to pay USC to use their stadium. I don’t know of any other P5 team that was forced into that kind of arrangement. The Bruins were always the poor relative of college football compared to the Trojans, and not having an on campus stadium assured that would always be the case. The insult came with having to accommodate your rich relations just to get a team on the field.
That’s the context of why UCLA AD satraps were always attempting to get the Regents, state, alums, anyone who had a slight connection to the school, to lobby for that project. Never happened, thankfully, never will happen. Best thing would be to surrender the field to SC in terms of football, but that ain’t happening. We’ll continue to see the Rose Bowl 2/3 empty for games, no matter how much they pay the HC. Same as it always was…
Ah, ok. That was well before my time there. For whatever reason it wasn’t much discussed at least in the circles I moved in. I thought that UCLA might want to play in the new pro stadium being built in Inglewood but a quick check of the LAT says they are locked into the Rose Bowl until 2044 with no opt-out clause.
It’s funny how a lot of organizations in LA from arts groups to pro sports are having trouble getting and keeping audiences. And all of them say it is because there is so much competition for things to do.
I’m not sure if this is the reason why they can’t keep audiences, but Los Angeles isn’t a city as much as a loosely associated series of suburbs. It’s not like my hometown of San Francisco, which has actual boundaries and limits. LA is..,,everywhere, and it really doesn’t end until you drive into the ocean or a mountain range. It would seem to be difficult to engender brand loyalty when you’re not sure what brand is yours…
I would say that there is now a very clear downtown LA which wasn’t the case 25 years ago. I think it’s a mix of things including the vast choices, always worsening traffic, homogenization of businesses as rents soar, and also that a lot of Angelenos are working on their own projects on top of whatever they do for a living. The latter prefer to do, not watch, whether it is art or sports. Then we get multiple stadiums in the same general area by the same crowded freeways.
Agreed about SF. I’m from the Bay Area but SF was always “over there” – a place to go a couple of times a year for something specific. I suppose it is even more so now with the economic boom.
September 16th, 2019 at 11:42AM
When I worked at UCLA (~’94-’03) I recall the school year didn’t start until late September. Students of that era also said it was hard to schlepp to Pasadena since maintaining a car in Westwood is difficult.
September 16th, 2019 at 11:42AM
The Rose Bowl, where UCLA plays football, is approximately 30 miles from campus. It makes sense it would be 2/3 empty for meaningless games. But you know that some admin is lobbying for the creation of an on campus football stadium costing in excess of $500 million. Don’t sneer, that’s actually been proposed….
September 16th, 2019 at 12:59PM
charlie: $500 million? More like a billion. Adzillatrons don’t come cheap.
September 16th, 2019 at 2:51PM
I don’t remember any administration proposals for an on campus football stadium at UCLA during my time there (or since.) They did redo Pauley Pavilion and have built some kind of fancy conference center.
There was an effort back in 1965 which didn’t succeed:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-nov-16-sp-crowe16-story.html
https://dailybruin.com/2018/10/10/throwback-thursday-petition-in-1965-opposed-using-incidental-fees-to-construct-on-campus-stadium/
…”Throughout the years, students at UCLA have managed to live their lives with football games being far away from home – after all, it means not having to pay for a new stadium.”…
September 16th, 2019 at 4:53PM
Ravi: I found your comment with links, and went with that one. Thanks.
September 16th, 2019 at 4:56PM
Thanks!
September 17th, 2019 at 9:55AM
@Ravi, you don’t remember, but my dad did. He was a UCLA alum, former Bruin baseball player, and stayed in touch with the AD. It might not have hit the Times, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t proposed. The on campus stadium was a highly unpopular notion, but it would have been a windfall for Wall Street bond palaces. Fortunately, apart from a few flacks, the idea was DOA, just like getting a football team at UCI….
September 17th, 2019 at 2:29PM
Fair enough. I was implicitly thinking about ideas that made it out of internal discussions for public backlash.
September 17th, 2019 at 6:09PM
Thing is about UCLA football, they played their home games at the Los Angeles Colluseum, which is the home stadium of their arch rivals, USC. That was the arrangement up until 1983. I don’t know for sure how the payment schedule worked, but I believe UCLA was forced to pay USC to use their stadium. I don’t know of any other P5 team that was forced into that kind of arrangement. The Bruins were always the poor relative of college football compared to the Trojans, and not having an on campus stadium assured that would always be the case. The insult came with having to accommodate your rich relations just to get a team on the field.
That’s the context of why UCLA AD satraps were always attempting to get the Regents, state, alums, anyone who had a slight connection to the school, to lobby for that project. Never happened, thankfully, never will happen. Best thing would be to surrender the field to SC in terms of football, but that ain’t happening. We’ll continue to see the Rose Bowl 2/3 empty for games, no matter how much they pay the HC. Same as it always was…
September 17th, 2019 at 6:26PM
Ah, ok. That was well before my time there. For whatever reason it wasn’t much discussed at least in the circles I moved in. I thought that UCLA might want to play in the new pro stadium being built in Inglewood but a quick check of the LAT says they are locked into the Rose Bowl until 2044 with no opt-out clause.
It’s funny how a lot of organizations in LA from arts groups to pro sports are having trouble getting and keeping audiences. And all of them say it is because there is so much competition for things to do.
September 17th, 2019 at 6:49PM
I’m not sure if this is the reason why they can’t keep audiences, but Los Angeles isn’t a city as much as a loosely associated series of suburbs. It’s not like my hometown of San Francisco, which has actual boundaries and limits. LA is..,,everywhere, and it really doesn’t end until you drive into the ocean or a mountain range. It would seem to be difficult to engender brand loyalty when you’re not sure what brand is yours…
September 17th, 2019 at 7:43PM
I would say that there is now a very clear downtown LA which wasn’t the case 25 years ago. I think it’s a mix of things including the vast choices, always worsening traffic, homogenization of businesses as rents soar, and also that a lot of Angelenos are working on their own projects on top of whatever they do for a living. The latter prefer to do, not watch, whether it is art or sports. Then we get multiple stadiums in the same general area by the same crowded freeways.
Agreed about SF. I’m from the Bay Area but SF was always “over there” – a place to go a couple of times a year for something specific. I suppose it is even more so now with the economic boom.
All of this is now diverging from the main post.