They Continue to Overlook an L.A. Landmark

Look, we’ve got no argument against Pasadena. Guys there change their shorts regularly. The Rose Queen usually plays the piano, bakes brownies and wants to help children.

And the joke died years ago about the passenger in Pasadena ordering the cabbie, “Take me to the action.”

Driven to a reservoir on the edge of town, the passenger asks: “What’s here?”

The cabbie whispers: “Night fishing.”

I mean, one doesn’t hear that any more about Pasadena, taking its place in the family of American communities.

All we are trying to figure out is what has Pasadena done for pro football? Why is Pasadena landing all these Super Bowls while Los Angeles is standing around with breakfast food on its countenance?

Recently awarded the 1993 game, Pasadena will have served as Super Bowl location five times since the show last went to Los Angeles, which was 1973.

From that time, a quarter-century easily could pass before the fabled Coliseum in Los Angeles lands a Super Bowl game again.

And why would one call the Coliseum fabled? Ask the historical preservationists who are holding up the current environmental study preparatory to renovation of the stadium.

They see every square inch of Coliseum cement as an object of art.

Two Olympic Games have been consigned to the Coliseum. Presidents and Popes have addressed their minions there. Has Paavo Nurmi ever run at the Rose Bowl? Jesse Owens? Babe Didrickson?

Did Duke Snider ever try to throw a baseball over the rim of the Rose Bowl? He tried it at the Coliseum.

The point is, Los Angeles is sitting on a landmark just short of a ninth wonder, and the NFL owners, who select Super Bowl sites, are too uncultured to know it.

Maybe this isn’t surprising when you consider that leaders in Los Angeles don’t seem to know it, either.

Otherwise, cranking up to bid for the ’93 Super Bowl, why would Los Angeles enter into a coalition with Pasadena and Anaheim, agreeing to use the Rose Bowl as the game location?

Why wouldn’t Los Angeles push the coalition to advance the Coliseum?

Bill Robertson, Coliseum commissioner and stalwart in returning pro football to the stadium after the Rams fled to Orange County, is puzzled.

“I am hard-pressed to figure out why the Rose Bowl keeps getting this game (the Super Bowl),” Robertson says. “The Coliseum has been home to pro football since 1946. When the Rams left, we fought to find a replacement. We fought the NFL in court to keep it. And we then fought to convince the replacement to stay in Los Angeles when the lease expired.

“What has the Rose Bowl fought for? And why would our own people join a coalition designating a stadium in Pasadena as our flag-bearer?”

It is worse yet. The mayor of Los Angeles pushed for the Rose Bowl. The mayor has one of those memories in which he can remember what happened 50 years ago, but can’t remember the town that elected him.

We recall asking a member of the Los Angeles delegation why the group agreed to cast in with the Rose Bowl.

He responded that in a preliminary talk with Norman Braman, owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, he was told that Los Angeles area bidders would have a better chance enlisting the Rose Bowl as their stadium.

Braman is the biggest car dealer in America. He knows how to clear out the ‘91s to make room for the ‘92s.

But what does he know about stadiums in California? For big events, the Rose Bowl is an outrage. Getting in and out of that gulch where the stadium reposes is an experience one never recommends. Some never repeat it.

And Los Angeles is pro football, whereas Pasadena is college football--so much so, in fact, that the Rose Bowl for years would not allow its acreage to be polluted by professionals.

The Super Bowl was admitted there in 1977 only after major resistance on the part of locals, protecting the New Year’s game against encroachment by the pros.

By 1993, a Super Bowl ticket, which cost $150 this year, probably will go for $200, leading some to suspect the NFL preferred the Rose Bowl over the Coliseum because it seats about 10,000 more.

But capacity needn’t be a Super Bowl criterion, proof of which is, the 1992 game is going to Minneapolis, where the stadium holds 63,000.

The Los Angeles members of the coalition seeking to bring the Super Bowl to the Southland seemed more interested in visitors’ bucks that would rub off on their town from a Pasadena game than in the city’s dignity.

We would hope villagers here aren’t too dumb to know that when they have been bypassed five times in a row for Pasadena, they have been insulted.