Coliseum once also Bruins’ home
By Roberta Wolfson
Nov. 28, 2007 10:39 p.m.
For Leonello Costanzo, a UCLA alumnus, watching the USC-UCLA game at the Coliseum this Saturday will be like moving back in time.
Costanzo, who graduated in 1951, attended UCLA during an era when the Bruins were still playing at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, located downtown. The team played there until 1981 when they moved to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. But the distance and the location never bothered him.
“Every game we played, I would be there. We used to have a big student crowd not any different from today,” Costanzo said. “If you were a fan, no matter how far you had to go, it didn’t matter.”
UCLA played its first game at the Coliseum in 1933, at a time when the Coliseum was the only viable location to practice and hold games, Costanzo said.
“It was the only real stadium in town and it was fairly close to us,” Costanzo said. “But it was more convenient for USC.”
Since the UCLA football team moved its home base to the Rose Bowl in 1982, both the team’s morale and Bruin fan support has increased substantially, said former UCLA football coach Terry Donahue, who coached from 1971 to 1995.
“The best thing UCLA ever did was move to the Rose Bowl and get its own home field,” Donahue said. “That gave us a distinct home team advantage. There was a boost in attendance, a boost in morale, because we had our own identity.”
Donahue said the arrangement with the Coliseum was difficult for the Bruins, as UCLA had to compete with both USC and other professional football teams for playing time.
At one point, UCLA, USC and the Rams were all sharing the Coliseum as a space to play games, said Jon Lee, the marketing director for the Coliseum. He attributed the cramped quarters to the fact that the different teams might have been attracted to the Coliseum’s history.
“(The Coliseum has) got a lot of history to it, as far as the public perception,” Lee said. “The venue here is pretty much unparalleled. We’ve hosted two Olympics, Super Bowls and giant civic events.”
While the professional teams received priority, the Trojans came second because USC is located directly across the street from the Coliseum, Donahue said.
The two rival teams shared the same home field, often having to schedule home games around each other. If both UCLA and USC had a home game on the same weekend, one team would play Friday night and the other team would play Saturday.
But the difficulty was cleared up when UCLA made the transition from the Coliseum to the Rose Bowl in 1982 with the support of the current chancellor at the time, Charles E. Young.
“Chancellor Young thought the move would be better for the fans, provide the team with a sense of identity, and present a more advantageous financial situation for UCLA,” Donahue said.
The move produced a positive energy in the Bruin fan base and added a greater sense of identity for the UCLA football team, Donahue said.
“I think we played and performed better at the Rose Bowl. Generally you have more fans at your home field, more crowd support, and you’re more familiar with your surroundings. So we had a home field advantage at the Rose Bowl over the Coliseum.”
While traveling to the Coliseum never deterred him from attending games, Costanzo agreed that the move to the Rose Bowl created a greater sense of identity for the Bruins and had some positive results.
“People identify more with UCLA because of the fact that (the Rose Bowl) is our home field and we’re not sharing it with anyone else,” Costanzo said. “(After we moved), we were able to get our games. We didn’t have to play any more night games, in which we’d get out at 11 p.m. or later.”
One of the greatest advantages of moving to the Rose Bowl was the creation of a space where UCLA could host opponents on its own terms, Donahue said.
He recalled an incident when several UCLA students locked the Trojan horse mascot in its trailer at one of the USC-UCLA games a few years back.
“The horse didn’t get out all day, and UCLA won the game,” Donahue said. “Now if the game had been at the Coliseum, you would have seen that damn Trojan horse running around all over the place. But the game was at the Rose Bowl, and the Bruins didn’t even let the Trojan out. That’s just an example of what a home field advantage can do for you.”
