Letter to the Editor
Los Angeles Times
Saturday, December 1, 2007
USC flirted with the idea of moving to the Rose Bowl in 1982, the year that UCLA moved, and you can't blame them. The Coliseum Commission is a hydra-headed bureaucracy whose goals are a fantasy at best (get an NFL team, get an NFL team that will pay for all the repairs and upgrades, give an NFL team pretty much every control that USC seeks), all of which are not in USC's interests.
Bill Plaschke says in his Wednesday column that the "Rose Bowl . . . has done little for the UCLA football mystique." To the contrary, UCLA became a consistent winner after 1982, went to the Jan. 1 Rose Bowl several times in the next decade, sold many more season tickets, improved recruiting and provided an environment that encouraged alumni support in a way that the Coliseum never did.
The key difference between the Coliseum and the Rose Bowl is captured in Sam Farmer's front-page story Wednesday, as Rose Bowl operating company president Bill Thomson says "But we're not going to do something without UCLA's full agreement." Words that were never spoken or even thought of by the Coliseum with respect to the two universities in 1982.
Alan Charles
UCLA vice chancellor
(retired)