The spirit of the game
Opinion

Without the cash cow of the NFL, it’s very hard to see where the $300 million of such a full-scale upgrade will come from. Our thought at this point is to take the Rose Bowl into the future in stages.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Going to a college football game is by no means only about the back and forth of the pigskin over a matter of hours.

In fact, we’d say it’s... let’s say half about the game itself.

It’s about a lot of other things. The good picnic food and society at the tailgating parties before the game. For older fans who are alums of the schools, the chance to relax and swap lies with old classmates. Considering the sartorial splendor on display, it’s about seeing and being seen. Drinking - we’ve heard there is occasionally drinking at a college football game. Many fully acknowledge that they’re there to see the marching bands perform at half-time; at some traditionally African-American colleges in the South, it’s said that the vast majority of the fans are there for the high-stepping music.

So, yes, there is a collegiate sport in there as well, but it’s safe to say that the experience - the venue, the people all around - is key to the all-American autumn addiction.

You can’t quite savor all that from your seats in the stadium. On New Year’s Day at the Rose Bowl Game between USC and Illinois, just minutes before kick-off, tens of thousands of fans had made it through the turnstiles but not just yet to where they could see the gridiron. They were still milling about the vast concourse, buying souvenirs at the merchandise stands, munching on hot dogs, walking in close quarters through the crowd, fielding and tossing back the taunts from those wearing colors that weren’t their team’s own.

“You guys just got lucky against Ohio State!”

“Yeah, well, hell of a game against Stanford, Trojan boy!”

That kind of stuff.

When the time came to get inside to see the coin-toss and the Navy jet fly-over and - oh, yes - the first play, to say that there was a bit of a crush at midfield’s Tunnel 19 is to play it down.

There was pandemonium.

It’s hard to say what stadium architect Myron Hunt was thinking in the early 1920’s when he designed the width of those tunnels. Perhaps it’s simply the fact that people are terrifically fatter 80 years on. But this month, security workers stood in front of the tunnels holding up signs that stopped fans from entering for three of four minutes at a time while those already in the long, dark, narrow, claustrophobic passages made their way to their seats.

This is just one of the design issues the entrepreneurial Rose Bowl Operating Company is grappling with. Pasadena voters have properly given the thumbs-down to the plan to lure a National Football League team. That’s the good news – but what’s next for the aging stadium? Upgrades are certainly necessary. The tunnels first. But the RBOC says it also needs a new press box area that would include luxury boxes, a revenue-enhancer that has changed dramatically in just the 15 or so years since the current boxes were build. Its plans have also included bypassing the tunnel problem by adding ramps outside the bowl to take fans to higher seats. But those would be expensive and an area of concern for ardent preservationists.

Without the cash cow of the NFL, it’s very hard to see where the $300 million of such a full-scale upgrade will come from.

Our thought at this point is to take the Rose Bowl into the future in stages. In making over the locker rooms, stadium management took the teams from perhaps the most crowded and worst facilities in college football to what coaches and players are now saying are the biggest and best in the land is a find example. Little by little, from ingress and egress issues to expanding the concourse area and more, the greatest college football stadium in America can prudently keep up with the times while maintaining its dignity and architectural integrity as well.