I had season tickets for 25 years (no more though as I retired and moved) and at least for most of the games the Rose Bowl was pretty full. I can't imagine even only 25,000 there. I'm sure it was at least 3/4 full for almost all the games I went to.
Some serious research here, Joe! Not to get too hard case on this, but it could be very embarrassing for the Athletic Department. I hearken back to the Kelly years and how that guy tooled the school and left UCLA high and dry, getting outta Dodge on the last stage heading East!
I still remember how that crook was running his obscene epicurean training tables for FB while the other programs went begging. Snippet from an early LAT article on The Chipster's criminal enterprise.
"The increased spending at UCLA has not translated into success on the field so far, with the Bruins going 7-17 under Kelly. Average game attendance at the Rose Bowl has declined steadily, hitting a low of 43,849 in 2019. At the same time, ticket revenue dipped from $19.8 million in 2014 to $12.5 million last season.
. . .
"Sports business experts voiced additional concerns about the $5.4-million food
budget in relation to spending for other UCLA teams. The school spent $6.1 million on non-travel athlete meals in 2019, with 89% going to football. Women’s basketball spent less than $97,000."
They seriously count the players as part of the attendance?? Well I hope they at least subtracted the 11 guys on "defense" last Saturday.
The numbers fudging that Bolch uncovers is bad enough. It also shouldn't detract from the big picture that shows, even with the figures massaged, that attendance absolutely sucks. And that's a direct indictment of the leadership in the athletic department and football program over the last 20 years.
sad indeed. I've bled blue & gold since I was a kid. But it's been on a downward trajectory for ~25 years. I couldn't bring myself to watch the whole game saturday. It had to be one of the worst ever. Perhaps the 50-0 smackdown in the 'surrender whites' was close.
I forced myself to stay inside the stadium until the final gun.
My wife wanted to leave early. Finally, I agreed that we could start making our way out. When we got to the tunnel we entered through (not the tunnel where our seats are), we sat down until it was over.
You know, Tamara, I get to thinking about this quarter century decline and I am reminded of UCLA's national athletic prowess all started back in the sixties.
I contend this goes back to the venerable AD "J. D. Doo" (sobriquet by those of us in residence at the time, conflating his initials with the "Adeedo" plumbing enterprise who'd snake out all the frats' overflowing terlets after the Wednesday beer busts or Saturday soirees. It's a long story.)
But J.D. vapor locked one year after retiring and was succeeded by several dynasties until we came to the infamous Guerror. Maybe I was naive, but I now regret my disrespect for Morgan. It could be argued that he built up UCLA athletics with hires (Prothro, Jim Bush, etc. and augmenting the facilities and programs) to national prominence. Take a gander at this Wiki bio.
This can be argued later, but the Wiki bio claims that "During Morgan's 16 years as UCLA's athletic director, he is credited with "revitaliz[ing] the sports program, catapult[ing] Bruin teams into the national spotlight, and ultimately redefin[ing] UCLA athletics as a model looked to by universities across the country."
While I know that subsequent ADs are credited with the Natties and championships they roll up, but it had to start somewhere with someone and I was there while J. D. did his magic, and it is no secret we students in the sixties sure wore ourselves out attending roundball in the new Pauley Pavillion and watching UCLA kick the crap out of some pretty impressive football opponents in the Mausoleum. This latter feat was something dormant after Red Sanders shamefully left us in the arms of a hooker at a downtown Los Angeles cathouse.
You cannot convince me that there was a decline in crowds during those times but, by the same token, no one can convince me that "the Fetus" (Jarmond) rolled up squat by way of groundbreaking athletic endeavors. But the case can be made for him presiding over the decline in RB attendance and what very well could be the nadir of what Morgan started 70 years ago.
So, I am very interested where Joe and Dmitri take us on the road to documenting the "Takeover of the Tarps" and other accounting tricks in use at the..er..J. D. Morgan Center.
I love your jaunts through memory lane 💙💛🤣 Simply legend, dear friend. I have some great sorority stories on Hilgard if you are ever curious (Kappa Kappa Gamma was my sisterhood).
So in sum the downward spiral has taken us from the top of the Hills of Westwood with Doo (the genius) to Dalis (see story below) to Donut 1 and now Donut 2 (aka Jelly Jarmond).
Dalis was the beginning of the end...
I remember my mom and I went to an exhibition game at Pauley and there were maybe 20 people. 20!!!So we decided to sit in a couple of great seats above center court. Dalis walked all the way around Pauley and came down to my mom and I and asked us for our tickets. He made us move back to our 'real' seats. What a proverbial 'a**.'
I don't know if Frenk truly loves UCLA, he is likely a short timer and I have a lot of doubts as he strikes me as just another establishment crony, aka Blockhead. But we shall see if he has any b-balls or f-balls to rid us of Jelly.
One glaring issue is this: once you have lost the younger generation of fans, it is really an uphill battle to restore a devoted base as the illustrious chapters of UCLA's athletic prowess quickly become lost and forgotten. Even the banners in Pauley feel more like a museum pieces.
If only we could bring back the real powder blue and gold all would look so much brighter 💙💛
Madam, I knew from a picture of you that you were a KK-upside down L! (I was an "upside down V-XA) and you ladies, being the cream of the crop, were nowhere in our league! I never got near that house -- even if I had done one of those Blutarski night creeps to watch the sisters have a pillow fight in their underwear. (cf. Animal House!)
But when I graduated and went into the USAF, I dated a Kappa from NU. She was a lovely lady that had the misfortune to know me and accompany me to a Grateful Dead concert in Omaha in 1969. Little did she know that Bob Weir and I were high school buds and when he left me tickets at the Will Call, there was a note saying we should head backstage (and thence to the guys hotel suite) after the concert.
She nonetheless had a grand old time and admitted he had "a lot of learning to do" about the goings on on the West Coast.
But I prattle.
Did you know/date any Kelps? I aspired to that rowdy crew until Zenon Andrusyhsyn basically blew the game of the century against USC by missing a PAT and a FG and having two blocked. After which, he fired up on a couple of quarts of vodka and wandered up and down Strathmore in a drunken fever blaming everyone else for the loss.
SO very sorry re you and your mom and that unfortunate encounter with Dalis. You'd think the guy would cut some slack with so man vacant seats! I know this borders on sacrilege but the Good ol' Toe Jam boys along figureroa woulda overlooked that!
But you nailed the younger generation thing. Loyalty and fervor and enthusiasm are tempered in the fires of victories and achievement. One cannot engender fan loyalty listening to sclerotic old geezers like me belch Coca Cola gas about the glories of people old enough to be their grandfathers!.
But as for heroes and powder blue and golds, top of my list would be that epic photo of Bobby Stiles after he stopped Bobby Apisa on the two point conversion to win the 1966 RB.
Those were the days my friend. I thought they'd never end.
I didn't date any Kelps, but Zenon dazed on Strathmore must have been a sight to behold. Wonder if he remembers 🤣
I actually had a lot of great times on Gayley, even lived among the frat boys until I moved into the Kappa house and enjoyed the glam of the proper mansion life!
I didn't like beer and disdained vodka, so I was fairly safe from most of the party lowlights. 🤣
Thanks for taking me back to the glory days (before my time, but a girl can dream).
I think old Zenon is still doing place-kicking work up in Ligue Canadienne de football, for the Montreal Roughriding, Stampeding Alouettes (or some such). Actually, he departed this plane of existence on 7 August 2073..
..the end of an era.
Glad you got your UCLA sororitorial residency matters sorted out, dear lady! Sadly tragic (or tragically sad) we "Lamba Chi's" were relegated far down the social ladder from the pulchritudinous Kappas and Thetas, so I fished the middle tier waters* and even there was spurned by the more glamorous who opted for crazed Fiji Islanders, Sig-manures, ATOs, and 12-step recovering Betas.
We were over on Strathmore right between the Sigma Nu and ZBT (Zion Banking & Trust) houses, a minor claim to fame being that our crib had a 3" fire hose line that could service the roof. Anytime, the adjoining lads got frisky with their puny water balloons and Super Soakers, we'd wash them away like so many undesirable vermin. It got to be such a habit that we merely had to uncoil our hoses to elicit the white flag waving responses. My roomy and I has a sign posted in our window facing the Zebes:
"HOUSES WASHED AND POOLS FILLED CHEAP!"
Back in the Cold War days, it was called Mutually Assured Destruction ~~ only it was not mutual for us!
*Remember the old adage: if all else fails, Tri-deltas.
Too many great eras end... I am sure the spirit of Zenon is still in the rafters and perhaps even on Strathmore. RIP, Z.
So I vividly remember the Lamda Chi's as a super nice group. I wonder if the Hose is still a first line of Defense, perhaps our trench guys on the Football team could put it to use 🤣
Sigma Nus were a snooty lot. I did have fun with the prepsters of Sigma Chi. But Beta was indeed the proverbial animal house and I walked on the other side of Gayley when passing 🤣
My final two houses came down to Kappa and Tri-Delts, but my heart was set on Kappa. One of my closest friends Vivienne Vella married Nathan Hochman - I was a bridesmaid at the wedding 💗
Nathan is now the LA County DA, so hoping he cleans up the crime ridden mess that LA has become. Perhaps he could also clean up the Morgan Center Admin as well.
So much has deteriorated...
UCLA football, and LA in general. Guess I will just hold on to the glorious and innocent memories of eras gone by.
Don't know if he had tried earlier, but the AD should've at least made an effort to attract some willing sponsors to pay for displaying their ads or logos on tarps to at least get some revenue for any unfilled seats. The Rose Bowl would then have a chance to be filled to capacity with tarps instead of counting people and fudging with the number of attendees.
Didn't we swim in those waters with that abortive "UnderWire" or "Unlocked" or "LockedJock" clothing company whose contract we weasled out of?
Not a good look.
Still, I'd opt for the 2020 MLB cardboard fans in the seats if I could get paid an honorarium for mine. I'd be holding a rude sign calling for the for the expulsion of our current Fetus back to Columbus or something!
Ehh, every school in the country fudges numbers to some extent. Steven Godfrey told a great story on his podcast about sitting next to the SIDs at an SEC school who were deciding the attendance numbers in front of the press. Sometimes they like to throw little in-jokes in the numbers, like the score of a rivalry game at the end.
The bigger story is that even the fudged numbers are low, because that's where UCLA is at now. UCLA could only manage "35k" on a holiday weekend with no competition from the NFL and with a real opponent. That's frankly embarassing and as much an indictment of the current regime (coaches and athletic director) as anything else.
Well, I don't care much that the attendance #s are fudged. But I do care that the quality of our intercollegiate athletics is at an all-time low, that UCLA purportedly shelled out $5 million dollars for it's "non-professional" student athletes to complete and that the University administration has seemingly stopped caring about the quality of athletics and apparently only cares about the money. Wouldn't have happened in the days of Ray Allen, Bill Atkinson and Red Sanders (showing my age).
I do care about distorting the attendance numbers. That’s a major character flaw of the current administration. They do this in China. Distorting the truth. Awful.
They apparently forgot to mention that the folks hiding underneath the tarps are also part of the total attendance...
Are there any other major college football stadiums that are using tarps to hide empty seats? Maybe AD Martin Guerrero should just bring in thousands of crash dummies and permanently attach them to the empty seats. According to Wikipedia, the Rose Bowl is the 10th largest stadium in the NCAA, 11th largest in the U.S., and 20th largest in the world, so it's so shameful that the UCLA football program is now so incompatible with such a reknown and historic place. If it were possible, I wouldn't be opposed to the idea of digging a 100 foot hole (similar to SoFi Stadium) somewhere on campus and building a true, home-field venue that stands a much better chance of being packed.
I remember the first time seeing that video as we were working on that series of articles and getting so fired up. I knew it was a tough task, but if us Bruins Nation peeps could conceive this, then surely somebody with a vision and means to make it happen would take up the mantle.
Thanks GregBruin for sharing memories of that past effort. Whenever I win the PowerBall lottery, I'll remember to fork out a few bucks to help make that vision come true.
It's a known fact that Drake Stadium was expressly built for the purpose of turning it into an on-campus FB stadium to supplant the Mausoleum. It was a big scandal back in the day and, if you paw through some old Daily bRuins, you will find these conspiracy theory write ups about the overbuilt light pedestals that would serve as piers and bases for the second deck, etc.
Back in the day, in the midst of the Vietnam war protests, denying the establishment of the pleasures of FB or something like that led to a strong enough undercurrent to making that never become a reality.
Then, of course, they cut the deal with the RB, and that ship sailed.
One of the old BN legends, Fox71, frequently told the story that there was a student referendum while he was there to add $1 to the student fees for one year to generate money for the stadium and it failed by a very close margin. Your recollections fit well with his.
Thank you for the reminder! I remember Fox71 well! And he nailed it: they wanted an extra buck on our incidental fees to convert Ducky Drake stadium into an on-campus stadium. And, yes, it did fail by a whisker! Doing some rough math on the back of an envelope, there were about 30,000 plus of us back in the mid 60s so that would have been 4x30,000 or $120,000* -- probably less* -- but like you said, GB, imagine what could have been!
*we were on the quarter system back then and Summer quarter was far less that the other three. But $100,000 or so costs when it would be in the MILLIONS today?
When you resort to this type of behavior, you know it's bad. It's like telling people you got millions in the bank while tryling to live like rockstar when all you have are two bucks to your name, an overdrawn bank account, and a stack of 30-day late bill notices piled on the kitchen table. The of blue and gold standard of excellence should never stoop to inflating numbers. All one has is their word. It's about credibilty. You want to fix attendance figures, then focus on better coach hires and all that it takes to make it happen. Put your teams in a winning position where they are competitve - not living on a hope and dreams of shameless self-promotion fashioned in the proverbial emporer's robe. As far as I am concerned, UCLA is living off past equity long spent. If UCLA wants to be an elite school for football and basketball, then do what it takes. And part of what it takes, is hiring the right leaders, the right decision makers, and the right people who have UCLA's best interests in mind for the student body and alumni. Stop with the bureaucrates who are trading on UCLA's brand equity for the next big gig. UCLA is not a stepping stone. It is the elite of the elite and compromising. the brand should not be tolerated.
I've always been a huge proponent of playing in the Rose Bowl, despite the distance from campus. But I do not think we deserve to play in the Rose Bowl anymore. We can't fill the stadium. we can't halfway fill the stadium. It's offensive to such a historic venue to have such an inferior tenant. Time to call up wherever those two MLS teams LA has play and see if they can make room for us. Or maybe just play at Drake. Probably won't fill those stadiums either.
I had season tickets for 25 years (no more though as I retired and moved) and at least for most of the games the Rose Bowl was pretty full. I can't imagine even only 25,000 there. I'm sure it was at least 3/4 full for almost all the games I went to.
In the words of Casablanca’s Captain Renault, “I am shocked, absolutely shocked to learn this!”
"Your winnings, sir."
Yeah, that next line doesn't really apply here, does it?
Only if you follow with how scant the winnings are!
"Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship!"
https://youtu.be/DDybg9CNXcM?feature=shared
Some serious research here, Joe! Not to get too hard case on this, but it could be very embarrassing for the Athletic Department. I hearken back to the Kelly years and how that guy tooled the school and left UCLA high and dry, getting outta Dodge on the last stage heading East!
I still remember how that crook was running his obscene epicurean training tables for FB while the other programs went begging. Snippet from an early LAT article on The Chipster's criminal enterprise.
"The increased spending at UCLA has not translated into success on the field so far, with the Bruins going 7-17 under Kelly. Average game attendance at the Rose Bowl has declined steadily, hitting a low of 43,849 in 2019. At the same time, ticket revenue dipped from $19.8 million in 2014 to $12.5 million last season.
. . .
"Sports business experts voiced additional concerns about the $5.4-million food
budget in relation to spending for other UCLA teams. The school spent $6.1 million on non-travel athlete meals in 2019, with 89% going to football. Women’s basketball spent less than $97,000."
Round up the usual suspects!
They seriously count the players as part of the attendance?? Well I hope they at least subtracted the 11 guys on "defense" last Saturday.
The numbers fudging that Bolch uncovers is bad enough. It also shouldn't detract from the big picture that shows, even with the figures massaged, that attendance absolutely sucks. And that's a direct indictment of the leadership in the athletic department and football program over the last 20 years.
The dysfunction just keeps growing.
Agree, G....just one more papercut in the slow bleed out that is UCLA Athletics.
🤣🤣🤣 'Well I hope they at least subtracted the 11 guys on "defense" last Saturday.'
Thank you G! My tea is now all over my shirt 🤣🤣🤣
"Tarps Made Here"
🤣Sadly tragic!
sad indeed. I've bled blue & gold since I was a kid. But it's been on a downward trajectory for ~25 years. I couldn't bring myself to watch the whole game saturday. It had to be one of the worst ever. Perhaps the 50-0 smackdown in the 'surrender whites' was close.
I forced myself to stay inside the stadium until the final gun.
My wife wanted to leave early. Finally, I agreed that we could start making our way out. When we got to the tunnel we entered through (not the tunnel where our seats are), we sat down until it was over.
But it was a humiliating loss.
You know, Tamara, I get to thinking about this quarter century decline and I am reminded of UCLA's national athletic prowess all started back in the sixties.
I contend this goes back to the venerable AD "J. D. Doo" (sobriquet by those of us in residence at the time, conflating his initials with the "Adeedo" plumbing enterprise who'd snake out all the frats' overflowing terlets after the Wednesday beer busts or Saturday soirees. It's a long story.)
But J.D. vapor locked one year after retiring and was succeeded by several dynasties until we came to the infamous Guerror. Maybe I was naive, but I now regret my disrespect for Morgan. It could be argued that he built up UCLA athletics with hires (Prothro, Jim Bush, etc. and augmenting the facilities and programs) to national prominence. Take a gander at this Wiki bio.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Morgan
This can be argued later, but the Wiki bio claims that "During Morgan's 16 years as UCLA's athletic director, he is credited with "revitaliz[ing] the sports program, catapult[ing] Bruin teams into the national spotlight, and ultimately redefin[ing] UCLA athletics as a model looked to by universities across the country."
While I know that subsequent ADs are credited with the Natties and championships they roll up, but it had to start somewhere with someone and I was there while J. D. did his magic, and it is no secret we students in the sixties sure wore ourselves out attending roundball in the new Pauley Pavillion and watching UCLA kick the crap out of some pretty impressive football opponents in the Mausoleum. This latter feat was something dormant after Red Sanders shamefully left us in the arms of a hooker at a downtown Los Angeles cathouse.
You cannot convince me that there was a decline in crowds during those times but, by the same token, no one can convince me that "the Fetus" (Jarmond) rolled up squat by way of groundbreaking athletic endeavors. But the case can be made for him presiding over the decline in RB attendance and what very well could be the nadir of what Morgan started 70 years ago.
So, I am very interested where Joe and Dmitri take us on the road to documenting the "Takeover of the Tarps" and other accounting tricks in use at the..er..J. D. Morgan Center.
It will be fun!
War, my friend...
I love your jaunts through memory lane 💙💛🤣 Simply legend, dear friend. I have some great sorority stories on Hilgard if you are ever curious (Kappa Kappa Gamma was my sisterhood).
So in sum the downward spiral has taken us from the top of the Hills of Westwood with Doo (the genius) to Dalis (see story below) to Donut 1 and now Donut 2 (aka Jelly Jarmond).
Dalis was the beginning of the end...
I remember my mom and I went to an exhibition game at Pauley and there were maybe 20 people. 20!!!So we decided to sit in a couple of great seats above center court. Dalis walked all the way around Pauley and came down to my mom and I and asked us for our tickets. He made us move back to our 'real' seats. What a proverbial 'a**.'
I don't know if Frenk truly loves UCLA, he is likely a short timer and I have a lot of doubts as he strikes me as just another establishment crony, aka Blockhead. But we shall see if he has any b-balls or f-balls to rid us of Jelly.
One glaring issue is this: once you have lost the younger generation of fans, it is really an uphill battle to restore a devoted base as the illustrious chapters of UCLA's athletic prowess quickly become lost and forgotten. Even the banners in Pauley feel more like a museum pieces.
If only we could bring back the real powder blue and gold all would look so much brighter 💙💛
Madam, I knew from a picture of you that you were a KK-upside down L! (I was an "upside down V-XA) and you ladies, being the cream of the crop, were nowhere in our league! I never got near that house -- even if I had done one of those Blutarski night creeps to watch the sisters have a pillow fight in their underwear. (cf. Animal House!)
But when I graduated and went into the USAF, I dated a Kappa from NU. She was a lovely lady that had the misfortune to know me and accompany me to a Grateful Dead concert in Omaha in 1969. Little did she know that Bob Weir and I were high school buds and when he left me tickets at the Will Call, there was a note saying we should head backstage (and thence to the guys hotel suite) after the concert.
She nonetheless had a grand old time and admitted he had "a lot of learning to do" about the goings on on the West Coast.
But I prattle.
Did you know/date any Kelps? I aspired to that rowdy crew until Zenon Andrusyhsyn basically blew the game of the century against USC by missing a PAT and a FG and having two blocked. After which, he fired up on a couple of quarts of vodka and wandered up and down Strathmore in a drunken fever blaming everyone else for the loss.
SO very sorry re you and your mom and that unfortunate encounter with Dalis. You'd think the guy would cut some slack with so man vacant seats! I know this borders on sacrilege but the Good ol' Toe Jam boys along figureroa woulda overlooked that!
But you nailed the younger generation thing. Loyalty and fervor and enthusiasm are tempered in the fires of victories and achievement. One cannot engender fan loyalty listening to sclerotic old geezers like me belch Coca Cola gas about the glories of people old enough to be their grandfathers!.
But as for heroes and powder blue and golds, top of my list would be that epic photo of Bobby Stiles after he stopped Bobby Apisa on the two point conversion to win the 1966 RB.
The mud, dirt, and bloody jersey says it all.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.gettyimages.com%2Fid%2F81375493%2Fphoto%2Fucla-bob-stiles-1966-rose-bowl.jpg%3Fs%3D1024x1024%26w%3Dgi%26k%3D20%26c%3DsazwcQKKXcidVZZODkJ-P1n2T4LuUOhP4g4YIXPPrAw%3D&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=9114433264706cad9620d78b0aa93e541a38a1d64d2e009ef325fbf052b31b68
Those were the days my friend. I thought they'd never end.
I didn't date any Kelps, but Zenon dazed on Strathmore must have been a sight to behold. Wonder if he remembers 🤣
I actually had a lot of great times on Gayley, even lived among the frat boys until I moved into the Kappa house and enjoyed the glam of the proper mansion life!
I didn't like beer and disdained vodka, so I was fairly safe from most of the party lowlights. 🤣
Thanks for taking me back to the glory days (before my time, but a girl can dream).
Love our talks, War 💙💛
I think old Zenon is still doing place-kicking work up in Ligue Canadienne de football, for the Montreal Roughriding, Stampeding Alouettes (or some such). Actually, he departed this plane of existence on 7 August 2073..
..the end of an era.
Glad you got your UCLA sororitorial residency matters sorted out, dear lady! Sadly tragic (or tragically sad) we "Lamba Chi's" were relegated far down the social ladder from the pulchritudinous Kappas and Thetas, so I fished the middle tier waters* and even there was spurned by the more glamorous who opted for crazed Fiji Islanders, Sig-manures, ATOs, and 12-step recovering Betas.
We were over on Strathmore right between the Sigma Nu and ZBT (Zion Banking & Trust) houses, a minor claim to fame being that our crib had a 3" fire hose line that could service the roof. Anytime, the adjoining lads got frisky with their puny water balloons and Super Soakers, we'd wash them away like so many undesirable vermin. It got to be such a habit that we merely had to uncoil our hoses to elicit the white flag waving responses. My roomy and I has a sign posted in our window facing the Zebes:
"HOUSES WASHED AND POOLS FILLED CHEAP!"
Back in the Cold War days, it was called Mutually Assured Destruction ~~ only it was not mutual for us!
*Remember the old adage: if all else fails, Tri-deltas.
Too many great eras end... I am sure the spirit of Zenon is still in the rafters and perhaps even on Strathmore. RIP, Z.
So I vividly remember the Lamda Chi's as a super nice group. I wonder if the Hose is still a first line of Defense, perhaps our trench guys on the Football team could put it to use 🤣
Sigma Nus were a snooty lot. I did have fun with the prepsters of Sigma Chi. But Beta was indeed the proverbial animal house and I walked on the other side of Gayley when passing 🤣
My final two houses came down to Kappa and Tri-Delts, but my heart was set on Kappa. One of my closest friends Vivienne Vella married Nathan Hochman - I was a bridesmaid at the wedding 💗
Nathan is now the LA County DA, so hoping he cleans up the crime ridden mess that LA has become. Perhaps he could also clean up the Morgan Center Admin as well.
So much has deteriorated...
UCLA football, and LA in general. Guess I will just hold on to the glorious and innocent memories of eras gone by.
💙💛
Don't know if he had tried earlier, but the AD should've at least made an effort to attract some willing sponsors to pay for displaying their ads or logos on tarps to at least get some revenue for any unfilled seats. The Rose Bowl would then have a chance to be filled to capacity with tarps instead of counting people and fudging with the number of attendees.
LOL
Didn't we swim in those waters with that abortive "UnderWire" or "Unlocked" or "LockedJock" clothing company whose contract we weasled out of?
Not a good look.
Still, I'd opt for the 2020 MLB cardboard fans in the seats if I could get paid an honorarium for mine. I'd be holding a rude sign calling for the for the expulsion of our current Fetus back to Columbus or something!
Ehh, every school in the country fudges numbers to some extent. Steven Godfrey told a great story on his podcast about sitting next to the SIDs at an SEC school who were deciding the attendance numbers in front of the press. Sometimes they like to throw little in-jokes in the numbers, like the score of a rivalry game at the end.
The bigger story is that even the fudged numbers are low, because that's where UCLA is at now. UCLA could only manage "35k" on a holiday weekend with no competition from the NFL and with a real opponent. That's frankly embarassing and as much an indictment of the current regime (coaches and athletic director) as anything else.
Well, yeah, Bolch did write about how JD Morgan would either nod or write a new number down which became what they reported.
Unfortunately, I'm going to have to schedule an email for Sundays now to get the ticket scan count to know the real number.
do they call it "paid attendance"? Dodgers did this for year (probably still do).
Yeah, Those September games in 2022 had no one attending. To quote Chick Hearn " If there are 26,700 here 14, 500 are dressed as seats!"
Do not forget the seats taken up by the "Popcorn Machine"!
Well, I don't care much that the attendance #s are fudged. But I do care that the quality of our intercollegiate athletics is at an all-time low, that UCLA purportedly shelled out $5 million dollars for it's "non-professional" student athletes to complete and that the University administration has seemingly stopped caring about the quality of athletics and apparently only cares about the money. Wouldn't have happened in the days of Ray Allen, Bill Atkinson and Red Sanders (showing my age).
I do care about distorting the attendance numbers. That’s a major character flaw of the current administration. They do this in China. Distorting the truth. Awful.
They apparently forgot to mention that the folks hiding underneath the tarps are also part of the total attendance...
Are there any other major college football stadiums that are using tarps to hide empty seats? Maybe AD Martin Guerrero should just bring in thousands of crash dummies and permanently attach them to the empty seats. According to Wikipedia, the Rose Bowl is the 10th largest stadium in the NCAA, 11th largest in the U.S., and 20th largest in the world, so it's so shameful that the UCLA football program is now so incompatible with such a reknown and historic place. If it were possible, I wouldn't be opposed to the idea of digging a 100 foot hole (similar to SoFi Stadium) somewhere on campus and building a true, home-field venue that stands a much better chance of being packed.
Here's what you're looking for, Bruin4Ever:
https://youtu.be/aw5qsbzaKjk?si=rS35E-sUVzQi0oLs
https://www.bruinsnation.com/2011/11/17/2521154/attention-dan-guerreros-replacement-fix-uclas-football-facilities-Part-5
I remember the first time seeing that video as we were working on that series of articles and getting so fired up. I knew it was a tough task, but if us Bruins Nation peeps could conceive this, then surely somebody with a vision and means to make it happen would take up the mantle.
That was 14 years ago...
Thanks GregBruin for sharing memories of that past effort. Whenever I win the PowerBall lottery, I'll remember to fork out a few bucks to help make that vision come true.
Go Bruins, Dream On!
It's a known fact that Drake Stadium was expressly built for the purpose of turning it into an on-campus FB stadium to supplant the Mausoleum. It was a big scandal back in the day and, if you paw through some old Daily bRuins, you will find these conspiracy theory write ups about the overbuilt light pedestals that would serve as piers and bases for the second deck, etc.
Back in the day, in the midst of the Vietnam war protests, denying the establishment of the pleasures of FB or something like that led to a strong enough undercurrent to making that never become a reality.
Then, of course, they cut the deal with the RB, and that ship sailed.
One of the old BN legends, Fox71, frequently told the story that there was a student referendum while he was there to add $1 to the student fees for one year to generate money for the stadium and it failed by a very close margin. Your recollections fit well with his.
Oh, what could have been.
Thank you for the reminder! I remember Fox71 well! And he nailed it: they wanted an extra buck on our incidental fees to convert Ducky Drake stadium into an on-campus stadium. And, yes, it did fail by a whisker! Doing some rough math on the back of an envelope, there were about 30,000 plus of us back in the mid 60s so that would have been 4x30,000 or $120,000* -- probably less* -- but like you said, GB, imagine what could have been!
*we were on the quarter system back then and Summer quarter was far less that the other three. But $100,000 or so costs when it would be in the MILLIONS today?
..remember the COVID-shortened 2020 MLB season where they had those ridiculous posters to fans in the seats?
Yeah, hope to the dear Lord above that "The Fetus's" Minions don't revive that concept!
When you resort to this type of behavior, you know it's bad. It's like telling people you got millions in the bank while tryling to live like rockstar when all you have are two bucks to your name, an overdrawn bank account, and a stack of 30-day late bill notices piled on the kitchen table. The of blue and gold standard of excellence should never stoop to inflating numbers. All one has is their word. It's about credibilty. You want to fix attendance figures, then focus on better coach hires and all that it takes to make it happen. Put your teams in a winning position where they are competitve - not living on a hope and dreams of shameless self-promotion fashioned in the proverbial emporer's robe. As far as I am concerned, UCLA is living off past equity long spent. If UCLA wants to be an elite school for football and basketball, then do what it takes. And part of what it takes, is hiring the right leaders, the right decision makers, and the right people who have UCLA's best interests in mind for the student body and alumni. Stop with the bureaucrates who are trading on UCLA's brand equity for the next big gig. UCLA is not a stepping stone. It is the elite of the elite and compromising. the brand should not be tolerated.
I've always been a huge proponent of playing in the Rose Bowl, despite the distance from campus. But I do not think we deserve to play in the Rose Bowl anymore. We can't fill the stadium. we can't halfway fill the stadium. It's offensive to such a historic venue to have such an inferior tenant. Time to call up wherever those two MLS teams LA has play and see if they can make room for us. Or maybe just play at Drake. Probably won't fill those stadiums either.