Rose Bowl Sues UCLA to Enforce Long-Term Lease

Is UCLA really looking to leave Pasadena for SoFi Stadium in Inglewood?

Attendance for UCLA games have cratered since Martin Jarmond became UCLA’s Athletic Director. (Photo Credit: @jordan_mendoza5)

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Ironclad.

That’s how I’ve previously described UCLA’s lease with the Rose Bowl.

Apparently, in addition to being unable to “read the room,” it now appears that Martin Jarmond is unable to read the contract, too.

If he, or anyone in the UCLA Athletic Department did, they would see what should be abundantly clear to anyone who reads the contract. There is no way, short of a negotiating what would be a very large payout to the City of Pasadena, to escape playing in the Rose Bowl unless the stadium were to fall into the kind of disrepair that the Oakland Coliseum had become known for before the A’s finally left after the 2024 season.

I’ve previously written that the contract even contains a waiver of the right to terminate the lease. That section says, in part:

Any attempt by [UCLA] to terminate this Agreement…would be a breach of this Agreement for which monetary damages alone would be inadequate and for which RBOC would be entitled to seek equitable remedies to compel enforcement of this Agreement.

Well, according to an LA Times article written by Sam Farmer and posted to the Times website late last night, it appears that the RBOC and the City of Pasadena feel that they need to invoke this clause. As a result, the Rose Bowl has filed a lawsuit in LA County Superior Court against UCLA.

The complaint alleges that UCLA is seeking to break the lease in order to move to SoFi Stadium. Farmer’s article quotes the complaint as saying that UCLA has been “unequivocally expressing its intent to abandon the Rose Bowl Stadium and relocate its home football games to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood,” and calls that “a profound betrayal of trust.”

I’m going to call this what it is. This is an unbelievable attempt to blame the Rose Bowl’s distance from campus for the mismanagement of the UCLA football program.

To be sure, attendance has been down since COVID-19.

But, as I’ve said before, UCLA fans invented the kind of “social distancing” we saw during the pandemic around the time that Chip Kelly took over the program in 2018.

Frankly, this is a pathetic attempt by Martin Jarmond to suggest that it’s the distance to the Rose Bowl which has caused UCLA’s attendance to decrease since he became athletic director.

It also ignores the fact that UCLA fans have filled the stadium when the team actually plays well as we saw during the Jim Mora era.

Of course, it should come as no surprise that Jarmond would seem to think that filling the Rose Bowl will never bounce back. That’s because the embattled athletic director allegedly told a donor that, according to an LA Times article by Ben Bolch, “historically, UCLA had won an average of seven to eight games a year, suggesting those should be the expectations going forward.”

Well, if those are the expectations, then yeah, no amount of marketing is going to improve attendance at the Rose Bowl, SoFi, or even an on-campus stadium.

And it’s tone deaf statements like that which led to a group of 64 former football players to sign a letter to UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk calling for Jarmond’s firing as athletic director.

It seems safe to say that, unless UCLA’s actions to explore moving to SoFi Stadium were directed by Chancellor Frenk himself, this could potentially be the final straw that seals Jarmond’s fate.

The fact of the matter is that this lawsuit couldn’t come at a worse time for UCLA. The university is already under pressure from the federal government, which is seeking a $1.2 Billion fine over last year’s pro-Palestinian encampment that prevented Jewish students from being able to get to class.

If the attempt to move UCLA football games from the Rose Bowl to SoFi Stadium is a Jarmond initiative and doesn’t stem from a directive by Frenk, then it would seem that all the Chancellor would need to do to resolve the Rose Bowl dispute is confirm that UCLA will honor its contract with the Rose Bowl and terminate Jarmond for trying to break the lease.

So, given the Rose Bowl’s lawsuit contends that the damages to the City of Pasadena and the Rose Bowl “could easily exceed a billion dollars (or more),” it might suddenly make spending the money to terminate Jarmond’s contract a lot more palatable.

Interestingly, in UCLA’s defense, university outside counsel David L. Schrader “wrote in March that the university has not violated the agreement and that ‘preliminary discussions’ that contemplate a move ‘do not constitute a material breach for which RBOC would be entitled to a legal or equitable remedy.’”, according to Farmer’s article.

Gosh, that sounds reasonable, except for the fact that you wouldn’t expect “preliminary discussions” to occur 19 years before the contract is scheduled to end.

So, it’s no surprise that this lawsuit has been filed now in order to attempt to enforce what still looks like an ironclad contract.

It sure looks like the situation has deteriorated significantly since Jarmond became athletic director.

Back when Chip Kelly took over, I asked then-RBOC General Manager Darrell Dunn about his thoughts on UCLA choosing to spend the night before games in Westwood rather than the contractually required hotel in Pasadena. He told me at the time that UCLA has been a “great partner” and he wasn’t concerned about UCLA opting to stay in Westwood rather than Pasadena before games.

With both Dunn and Dan Guerrero no longer leading their respective institutions, it appears that the relationship between the school and the stadium has soured quickly.

If UCLA is somehow able to find a way out of the Rose Bowl contract and does move its home games to SoFi Stadium (or anywhere else), the single biggest question that will remain is “How will it affect the tailgating experience for fans?”

Given the fact that SoFi only allows tailgating in a limited portion of their public parking, it seems like it would impact that experience significantly. In fact, SoFi tailgating regulations only allow tailgating four hours before kickoff. which is 33% less time than what UCLA and the RBOC currently allow at the Rose Bowl. There are other additional restrictions which can potentially impose issues for Bruin fans, such as only allowing propane grills.

Now, I’m not sure what the impetus for change might be. It could be Chancellor Frenk. After all, he did come from the only other FBS school which had to travel a significant distance to play their home games. So, maybe, he feels like cutting that distance from campus will improve the fan experience, but if he’s really interested in that, why not just continue to expand UCLA’s land footprint throughout the region which would allow moving professional schools like UCLA’s Law School off the campus in Westwood in order to re-purpose land in Westwood towards an on-campus stadium?

The fact is that football is not the only UCLA sport with a venue issue. UCLA baseball’s long-term future at Jackie Robinson Stadium still remains up in the air, if not a day-to-day existence. A federal judge could choose permanently lock the Bruins out of JRS at just about any time, as we saw last winter.

In general, I don’t disagree with the idea of getting out of the Rose Bowl, but the lease needs to run its course. There is no way to terminate it early without the RBOC suing UCLA to enforce the contract, and Wednesday’s court filing has proven just that.

I don’t see any way that any judge is going to prevent the RBOC from enforcing the terms of the contract which runs until June 30, 2044.

That gives UCLA 19 years to acquire enough land outside of Westwood to free up enough space on campus to finally build that on-campus stadium Bruin fans have wanted for more than 50 years.

In the meantime, paying out Martin Jarmond’s contract looks like a paltry sum compared to the billion the Rose Bowl will want to settle the lawsuit. So, the Chancellor might want to rethink the statement of support he gave to Jarmond in response to the letter from the former players which Ben Bolch wrote about yesterday.

Heck, if you read that article, you probably noted that Jarmond had received the dreaded vote of confidence from Frenk in the article. I know I did.

The end of the Jarmond era seems closer by the minute.


Go Bruins!

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