The war of the Rose Bowl
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 5 hours ago
- 5 min read
By SHAWN HUBLER
In Southern California, a place with more than its share of famous couples, few celebrity relationships have been as enduring as that of the Rose Bowl and UCLA.
For 43 years, the landmark in the city of Pasadena has been the home field for the elite university’s football program. Never mind that the stadium and the school are 26 miles apart. Marriage is cumulative, and UCLA and the Rose Bowl have had much to bind them: Four decades. Millions of dollars. An ironclad deal.
Or so it seemed until last month, when Pasadena officials went to court, claiming that UCLA had been plotting for months in secret to relocate to SoFi Stadium, a newer, closer and glitzier venue. Such a move, Pasadena said, would irreparably harm the Rose Bowl and the city, which owns the stadium and borrowed heavily to refurbish it on condition that the team would remain through June 2044.
The university, in a terse statement, said that “no decision has been made.” But behind the scenes, Pasadena said, the university’s lawyers had informed the city’s lawyers that the school would be “moving on” after this season.
Since then, Southern Californians have watched awkwardly and painfully, like children caught up in a drawn-out divorce. Major law firms have been deployed. Professional experts have been consulted. Alumni have taken sides along generational and geographic lines.
“It’s an unholy mess,” said John Sandbrook, 76, a former UCLA assistant chancellor who in 1982 helped negotiate the Rose Bowl contract between the university and Pasadena.
Chris Rising, 56, a real estate developer who lives near the Rose Bowl and whose father, Nelson Rising, was a major UCLA donor, said his family was so angry and hurt that he decided not to help endow a new master’s of real estate development program.
Kai Dizon, 20, a sports writer for The Daily Bruin, the UCLA student newspaper, was excited. If the team, which has lost seven out of 10 games this year, would only stop playing an hour away in “a dump gilded in someone else’s nostalgia,” he wrote, maybe the stands wouldn’t be more than half empty at every game.
As the Bruins prepared to meet the University of Washington on Saturday for their final home game of the season, speculation has focused on the possibility that this also might be their last home game at the Rose Bowl.
“If the Rose Bowl and UCLA were to go separate ways, it would be a seismic shock in Los Angeles, and I do not think that’s an overstatement,” said Evan Lovett, 47, a UCLA alumnus and the creator of “L.A. in a Minute,” a popular online show about Los Angeles history and culture.
But, he added, “there is also a certain perspective of: ‘This could be great for recruiting. Who doesn’t want to play at SoFi?’”
In Southern California, the venues in question need no introduction.
On one side of the metropolis, Pasadena’s 103-year-old Rose Bowl, internationally known for its uncomfortable seats and breathtaking sunsets. On the other, 5-year-old SoFi, a palatial $5.5 billion complex in Inglewood with two NFL teams and many luxury suites, but debatable tailgating amenities.
Caught in the middle are two pillars of the West Coast establishment: The city of Pasadena, known worldwide as the home of the Tournament of Roses, the nationally televised parade and football game that snowed-in Americans watch each New Year’s Day with intense weather envy. And UCLA, a top-ranked university with an enrollment of more than 48,000 students and increasing financial challenges.
Unlike many schools, UCLA does not host football games on campus. Its neighbors in dense, affluent West Los Angeles have steadfastly opposed stadium proposals. Instead, the football program, like that of its rival, the University of Southern California, plays in public venues.
From the late 1920s until the early 1980s, another historic stadium, the Los Angeles Coliseum, hosted both teams, an arrangement that had continued even after 1946, when the Coliseum added two professional football tenants, the Los Angeles Rams and the short-lived Los Angeles Dons.
In 1980, the Rams relocated. Two litigation-filled years later, the Oakland Raiders moved to Los Angeles. Even before they arrived, Sandbrook recalled, UCLA realized that the Raiders and USC, which is next to the Coliseum, would dominate the venue. When the Coliseum’s governing board approved a lease without letting his boss at the time, Chancellor Charles E. Young, even speak in opposition, Sandbrook said, the chancellor told him to set Rose Bowl negotiations in motion. Two intensive weeks later, they had a deal.
Since then, the Rose Bowl has issued city-backed bonds to invest more than $150 million in stadium improvements. The pavilion housing a new press box and premium seating has been named for longtime UCLA football coach Terry Donahue. The home locker room is named for Young. In January, work is set to begin on a renovation and an exclusive field club in the south end zone.
UCLA pays no rent. Instead, the Rose Bowl takes a substantial percentage of ticket sales, concessions and other ancillary revenue like box seats. Under the contract, UCLA cannot play home football games anywhere else in Los Angeles or Orange counties, cannot terminate the contract and must remain at the stadium until the bond debt’s scheduled repayment 19 years from now.
But the world in which UCLA signed the deal is not the world it finds itself in now. New rules have pushed collegiate athletics more toward a professional business model, and new leaders oversee the university and its finances. UCLA’s new chancellor, Julio Frenk, arrived this year. Its new chief financial officer, Stephen J. Agostini, arrived last year. Its athletic director, Martin Jarmond, was hired in 2020. Rose Bowl defenders note pointedly that all came from outside California.
In May, members of the University of California Board of Regents grilled the three UCLA officials about the athletic department’s financial situation, including structural deficits that have left the department with annual shortfalls of tens of millions of dollars. A new regent, Bob Myers, the former general manager of the Golden State Warriors, rubbed his brow as the group explained that the lack of an on-campus stadium deprived UCLA of revenue streams common to other schools.
Jarmond told him that other Big Ten programs earned $15 million to $25 million a year from premium and club seats, but UCLA captured none of that under its deal with the Rose Bowl. The end zone renovation would bring UCLA some premium seat income, he said, but not until after next year.
That exchange occurred about three months after Rose Bowl officials said they had begun to hear rumors that UCLA was moving to SoFi.
City officials said UCLA at first denied the rumors. In October, though, city officials said, a lawyer for the university told one of Pasadena’s lawyers that UCLA no longer wanted to play at the Rose Bowl and planned to relocate “sooner rather than later.”
The university’s lawyer, identified in court documents as Jeffrey S. Moorad, the head of the global sports industry team at the law firm Morgan Lewis, did not respond to requests for comment. At a recent court appearance, a team of UCLA lawyers from another high-profile law firm, Gibson Dunn, said the city was jumping to conclusions. But they added only that UCLA intended to finish this season at the Rose Bowl. A spokesperson for SoFi Stadium said its owners “do not have a comment at this time.”
In Pasadena, the dispute has cut to the civic core, raising questions that go to the very identity of the city of more than 138,000 people.
“The Rose Bowl is the heart and soul of Pasadena, and the heart and soul of the Rose Bowl is college football,” said Mayor Victor Gordo, a Mexican immigrant who, as a child, worked outside the stadium selling little stuffed footballs. “This isn’t like a lease agreement for a condo.”