Al, Don’t Play Games With the Coliseum

Save the Coliseum. If it’s broke, fix it. For once, let’s not bulldoze our history.

Most of all, don’t let Al Davis, the Raiders’ tricky boss, con us into building him a new stadium on the Coliseum site, some ugly football palace with a roof like the Georgia Dome, where Sunday’s Super Bowl was played.

Those were my thoughts after reading Times reporter Ken Reich’s account of the damage inflicted on the old stadium by the Jan. 17 earthquake. A huge crack extends from the concession area, halfway up the Coliseum, down to the foundation. Smaller cracks can be seen. Broken concrete litters the place and gaps separate sections of seats.

Sounds like a real mess, bad enough for the city building inspectors to red-tag it, bad enough to cost many, many millions of dollars to repair. A first estimate was $35 million, but engineers now say the bill will be much more.

The commission that runs the Coliseum has neither earthquake insurance nor a cash reserve to pay for damage. The failure to insure a 70-year-old concrete stadium, located in the heart of earthquake country, is an unforgivable, but not surprising, oversight. The commission, dominated by local politicians, is famous for bum business decisions. But the Coliseum survived in spite of it.

The commission now is asking the federal government for money to repair the stadium. And this has upset a couple of the guys here at work. Spend the money on schools and hospitals, said Dean and Ted.

Tear it down, said Dean. Who needs it? Ted said it should stand as a ruin, just like the real Coliseum in Rome. It would be a plus for the city. The ruin of the Roman Coliseum draws more people than the Raiders do.

I turned my back on such cynicism. To me the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum symbolizes great L.A. events, a glorious past, the Olympics, the World Series, USC vs. Notre Dame, JFK accepting the Democratic presidential nomination there in 1960.

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That’s how Henry Weinstein and I saw it when we covered the last great crusade to save the Coliseum, more than a decade ago.

We were two sports fanatics reporting on City Hall for The Times when the Rams of the National Football League moved from the Coliseum to Anaheim. We realized that the event was more than a sports story. It was a saga of urban affairs, another example of a big business, located on the fringe of a depressed and decaying portion of South-Central Los Angeles, moving to the suburbs. We saw the campaign to lure another NFL team to the Coliseum as a great illustration--a microcosm of efforts to save the older portions of urban America.

Covering the story would also bring us into daily contact with famous sports personalities that we’d only read about. It was a sports junkie’s dream. We grabbed at it.

We weren’t disappointed. We were on the phone with Pete Rozelle, then the powerful NFL commissioner. Tex Schramm, the legendary football executive who made the Dallas Cowboys “America’s Team” in the ‘70s, was one of our best sources. So were legendary owners and players.

But one famous sports figure eluded us, and he was the most important.

L.A. political powers, headed by county labor chief Bill Robertson, were persuading Al Davis to move his Raiders from Oakland to the Coliseum. We had meticulously described Davis in a story--his white and black clothes, his hair combed back in sort of a ‘50s ducktail, his resemblance to the outlaw Raiders fans. He wasn’t flattered and Weinstein and I were relegated to talking to Davis’ devoted aide, Al LoCasale, known as “Little Al.”

Despite the obstacles put up by Big Al, we figured out his M.O. He was the meanest, toughest hardball player we’d ever seen. He bullied and bluffed his way into a favorable deal at the Coliseum, and along the way made millions from a lawsuit victory over the NFL. He persuaded the San Gabriel Valley town of Irwindale to give him millions more when he briefly hinted he might move to that city.

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Davis never got the plush refurbishing of the Coliseum that he wanted. It was improved but remained pretty crude by the standards of other NFL teams. But don’t underestimate the constantly scheming Davis mind.

By chance, on the day when the full extent of the damage became known, a report surfaced in the East (a Davis leak?) that the Raiders are talking about moving to Baltimore.

I can see it coming. The old Al Davis squeeze play. Tear down the Coliseum, build him a stadium, the Al Dome, colored Raider silver and black, or he’ll move to Baltimore or Hartford or Irwindale.

There’s a better way. Send Al to Washington and have him squeeze the money from the feds to rebuild the Coliseum. That would be a real victory for the silver and black.