Sunday Morning Quarterback: Is a Westwood Stadium for UCLA Football as Impossible as It Seems?
To quote Lee Corso, "Not so fast, my friends."
I’m going to start off this morning’s article with an admission: I have NEVER been a proponent of UCLA building an on-campus stadium.
Having grown up in New Jersey, I’ve always enjoyed going to the Rose Bowl for UCLA games even though it’s a bit of a trek from campus. I have felt that a big time college football program should play its home games in a big time venue, and the Rose Bowl Stadium is qualifies as big time venue due to the long and storied history of the Grandaddy of the All.
That’s not to say I don’t see the potential value of the Bruins playing their home games on campus. I just never really saw UCLA having much of an alternative given that the campus is squeezed for space. Of course, I had heard the story, about which Ben Bolch recently wrote an LA Times article, about how there were plans in the 60s to build a football stadium on the current site of Drake Stadium, but by the time I arrived on campus in 1989, that ship had seemed to have sailed.
But, today, I’m going to look into the future at where UCLA could play games in both the near and distant future.
SoFi Stadium
Some Bruin fans seem to like the idea of UCLA playing their home games at SoFi Stadium. I get that. SoFi is the shiny new stadium which is just a short drive down the 405 from campus.
After becoming the managing editor of both BruinsNation.com and, now, this site, I have actually read the lease agreement between UCLA and the Rose Bowl and it’s about as ironclad as they come. There is no buyout option. The only provision under which UCLA can terminate the lease is if two consecutive home games cannot be played at the Rose Bowl. Beyond that, there is even a provision waiving the right to terminate the lease which says:
Any attempt by [UCLA] to terminate this Agreement…would be a breach of this Agreement for which monetary damages alone would be inadequate….
So, basically, in order for UCLA to be able to terminate the lease, the Rose Bowl would need to be in a maintenance situation similar to the Oakland Coliseum. While that’s always possible, it seems unlikely as the Rose Bowl has seemed to be pretty well-maintained over the years.
In fact, another clause of the lease prohibits UCLA from playing more than one neutral site game in the Los Angeles area every five years. It also prohibits the Bruins from playing a conference game at a neutral site in the LA area as well as expressly forbidding Southern Cal as the opponent. In other words, they could potentially play a big non-conference game at SoFi like they did at Jerry’s World against Texas back in 2014.
That doesn’t even take into consideration the fan experience. While the fan experience inside SoFi may be great, the pregame experience leaves a lot to be desired. Tailgating just would not be as good as it is at the Rose Bowl.
To me, that is the death knell for the possibilities of UCLA games at SoFi. Yes, the stadium would be nice and the roof might make a game like the Bowling Green game more bearable, but the pregame experience would not be the same and that’s such an important part of the college football experience that it just wouldn’t work.
On-Campus Options
When Chip Kelly became head coach, he changed one of UCLA’s long-standing procedures. Instead of spending the night before a home game at a hotel in Pasadena, he decided to have the team stay at the Luskin Center on campus. Technically, this was a breach of section 29 of the contract by UCLA.
When I had a chance to ask now-retired RBOC General Manager Darryl Dunn about that situation, Dunn wasn’t concerned. 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.
While the Rose Bowl may not be concerned about a relatively minor breach of the lease by UCLA that doesn’t affect the stadium’s operations other than the route the team bus takes to arrive at the stadium, I would expect the RBOC to be concerned if UCLA suddenly decided they are going to build an on-campus stadium (if they had the space) more than a few years before the lease expires in 2044.
Even when Troy Aikman tweeted about the Rose Bowl crowd a few weeks ago, there was no real reason to think that an on-campus stadium is anything more than a pipe dream of some Bruin fans.
Since that tweet, however, something happened which is enough to get me to say “Hmmm….”
The first piece of news came this past week when UCLA announced that the school has acquired two pieces of property from the defunct California Marymount University.
According to the Los Angeles Times, UCLA is spending $80 million to purchase Marymount’s 24.5 acre campus and an 11-acre residential site in nearby San Pedro.
That piece of news alone probably doesn’t mean much as it relates to the future of an on-campus stadium. I don’t see UCLA using the land in Rancho Palos Verdes or San Pedro to build a football stadium in the South Bay. After all, it doesn’t really solve the issue of having home games off the main UCLA campus.
Heck, the Los Angeles Times article even mentions that the purpose of the acquisition is to allow UCLA to add an additional 1,000 students and that satellite campuses are “one of several strategies UCLA is developing” to be able to add 3,000 undergrads and 350 grad students by 2030.
But the notion of satellite campuses raises some interesting questions, such as “What if UCLA uses satellite campuses as a means of freeing up land in Westwood?” In the case of the former Marymount campus, the Academic Senate will determine what the most suitable use(s) are for the property.
The Marymount campus isn’t the only university property which was sold in the past month. The American Jewish University’s Bel-Air campus was sold to EF Education First, a family-owned international educational organization that helps people become global citizens through language learning and international academic degree programs. If other Los Angeles area campuses or large plots of land were to become available, could UCLA purchase that land as well?
It would seem so.
It may be that the university is following the lead of UCLA Health which has been establishing a large footprint throughout Los Angeles and Ventura counties over the past few years by establishing offices in Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Porter Ranch, Santa Clarita, Burbank and the South Bay.
Of course, it’s easier to rent office space for a doctor’s office than it is to purchase a piece of land large enough to be a satellite campus, but in the university’s process of expanding from the Westwood campus to multiple campuses, it would seem that long-term planning could see certain graduate programs like UCLA Law School, for instance, moved to a satellite campus. That would allow UCLA to repurpose either the a building, a series of buildings or pieces of land for use by either other existing programs, or potentially an on-campus stadium.
How much space would an on-campus stadium actually require? If we’re talking about a 40-50K seat football stadium, it could be done with as few as about 15 acres if you rely on the existing campus lots for parking. If the Westwood campus were able to free up about 25-30 acres, UCLA could potentially build both an on-campus football stadium and baseball park because, if we’re being honest, Jackie Robinson Stadium which is located on the West LA VA campus is not truly viable as a long-term home for Bruin baseball.
But What About Tailgating?
Tailgating is a large part of the UCLA football experience. Any stadium plans would need to be able to address tailgating.
But there is absolutely no reason why tailgating couldn’t occur on campus.
Two schools which demonstrate this are Ole Miss and Southern Cal. At Ole Miss, The Grove is largely considered one of, if not, the best tailgating experience in the country. As much as Bruin fans like to hate our crosstown rivals, Southern Cal also offers on-campus pre-game tailgating including a reservation system for reserving tailgating space on-campus.
The only thing required to make on-campus tailgating a complete success is a comprehensive on-campus tailgating policy. Since tailgating would be occuring on-campus, UCLA can determine what the policies and procedures should be and communicate that to fans. To be sure, there would be some growing pains the first season, and maybe even the first few seasons. But the administration has shown an increased willingness to listen to fan input and this should be no exception.
With potential tailgating issues being addressable, I’m cautiously optimistic that UCLA administrators and the UCLA Athletic Department will be able to either find land near the Westwood campus for additional Bruin sports facilities including both football and baseball stadiums or be able to think outside the box enough to acquire additional land in the LA area which would free up enough land on the Westwood campus to enable the university to build those facilities and raise the money between now and the end of UCLA’s Rose Bowl lease.
That said, I wouldn’t expect Gene Block to do a lot to advance this vision, especially considering that there has been much speculation about his eventual retirement which is more likely sooner rather than later, even though he deserves a lot of credit for buying into the move to the Big Ten. If UCLA’s next chancellor has an even better understanding that the Athletic Department is the de facto marketing department for the university, he or she could bring the vision of an on-campus stadium from a pipe dream to a reality.
Go Bruins!!!
Correction: This article originally listed the end date of UCLA's Rose Bowl lease as 2042. The lease was amended and extended to 2044. This article has been corrected to reflect that.
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Joe, et al..
Not to wade in like the Old Codger I am, but to bring up some historical points and the typical old codger grumbling.
(1) Historical note: when I was a yute, we had to bus our [now prune-wrinkled] asses over to the Los Angeles Mausoleum for games. True, the fraternity buses had the requisite beer kegs and "tailgating" - as it were - consisted of 12 oz cups of Coors or Bud and liverwurst sammiches that Florida (our cook) prepared the day before. The obvious downside was the totally dreary atmosphere surrounding that decaying edifice. Tangential observation: can any of youse imagine what it was like to go to a round ball game over at the Sports Arena? That was before Pauley and it was miserable. There were only two times I recollect that the Sports Arena was joyous: once in 1972 when UCLA won its eighth NCAA title versus the FSU Semi-Noles. The other was in 1983 when my HS alma mater (a small prep school in Menlo Park) won the Division II CIF basketball championships. That was it!
(2) Historical note: in 1968, there was a referendum on the school ballot about re-purposing the soon-to-be Duck Drake track stadium (in its own right, a magnificent venue for that sport) as a "modest 20-25,000 on-campus football stadium. At the time a lot of the student body were protesting the war 'n stuff and, for one reason or another, they thought this was an off-shoot of Dow Chemical and the establishment poised to take over the Uni to turn it into one giant ROTC mill. (Or something.) There was even a big sign spray-painted on an apartment house midway up Strathmore saying "FREE THE UCLA 30,000". Those were trying times, brothers and sisters. The paranoia was rampant and scruffy haired agitators were walking around, whispering, "See the light stanchions? Their gonna turn them into supports for the second deck!"
(3) Hysterical note: having been to a few games in Pasadena, one wonders how much impetus the Big 10 had to invite UCLA and USC to join based on some of their members having dreams about a game or two out there instead of some arctic-shilled Midwestern brick charnel houses. (Think Northwestern's Dyche Stadium, South Bend or Lincoln, Nebraska, etc. Despite the tradition, late fall games are no fun.) Moreover, any number of young men play their hearts out to just to have ONE GAME in Pasadena. UCLA schedules four to six per year.
(4) Crowds: If you win, they will come. It goes unargued that over the last decade, Guerror eroded UCLA's athletic standing and prominence to the point where attendance dropped off due to inferior coaching choices as well as commensurate achievements. The new AD has taken steps to reverse this slide. Certainly the Basketball has regained some semblance of prominence but progress in football has been tenuous at best.
A stat that jumped up and bit my ample, more-than-middle-aged ass was that the victory over Washington was THE FIRST over a ranked opponent Kelly has had at UCLA -- or something like that.
Also, though I love him and he is a more-than-faithful UCLA alum, but I'd think a lot more of Troy Aikman had he scored on that fourth quarter drive against USC back in 1987. I mean, Rodney Peete had the flu, fer crissakes!
No, old sons of Westwood, we have a long road back and mile to go before we will have the stones to dictate terms to the Rose Bowl folks as to where we play home games.
Very interesting ideas proposed here. I like it. We need new creative thinking to get out of this mess known as the Rose Bowl. As someone who attended UCLA Law, I never felt the law school was really part of the fabric of UCLA's campus. We never really ventured off beyond the law building and we were almost always confined there. It actually became really exhausting and stale being surrounded by the same miserable people all day, every day. I even once proposed to the school we should have social functions with the other UCLA graduate schools like the medical students, dental students, MBA students. Honestly, if the law building left the campus, no one there would even notice them gone. While for me personally, it was important that the law school be on the UCLA campus for continuity to my undergraduate days, I would definitely kick them to the curb now in exchange for a football stadium on campus. They don't even promote or instill Bruin pride at the law school.