Football or Futbol, the Coliseum Rocks

Thanksgiving weekend is a good time, I figure, to remind readers that despite all the political controversy about its future, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is still in business and doing better than most people realize.

Saturday, of course, the 73-year-old stadium will be jammed with college football fans watching the annual game between USC and Notre Dame. About 90,000 people are expected, the biggest crowd the historic stadium is likely to see this year. But the six football games USC plays in the Coliseum each year are not the only major events now held there.

In the last two weeks, as a matter of fact, the Coliseum has been the site of two major international soccer matches. On Nov. 20, more than 54,000 people showed up for an exhibition game between the national teams of Mexico and El Salvador. Last Sunday, more than 22,000 fans attended a match between the national teams of Guatemala and Costa Rica. And a big crowd is expected Dec. 8 for a match between Guatemala and the national team from Trinidad and Tobago.

The matches involving Guatemala are especially noteworthy, for they represent the kinds of opportunities the Coliseum Commission--which operates a facility jointly owned by the city, county and state--must pursue in the years to come to keep the Coliseum afloat financially.

Both contests are officially Guatemalan “home” games. But they were moved out of Guatemala after 84 fans were killed in a stampede at Guatemala City’s stadium in October. Both are key games, with the Guatemalan team trying to qualify for play in the 1998 World Cup tournament.

The invitation for Guatemala to play here was extended by Alan Rothenberg, the Los Angeles attorney who is president of the United States Soccer Federation. “I told them it would be like a home game, what with all the Guatemalans that live here,” he told me.

But there is more to this than Los Angeles’ benefiting from another city’s misfortune. This is a classic win-win situation. Soccer fans in Southern California are happy. Soccer fans in Guatemala get to see the games free, on television. And local taxpayers come out ahead, too, because it is they who will pay for the Coliseum’s upkeep if it becomes a white elephant.

That’s why the Coliseum must pursue more big soccer matches as aggressively as possible. Although the Guatemalan games were an unexpected opportunity, soccer promoters are considering the Coliseum as a possible site for matches involving not just Latin American teams, but famous soccer clubs from Europe, like England’s Manchester United, Italy’s AC Milan and Ajax from the Netherlands.

By the end of this year, 10 international soccer games will have been played at the Coliseum, as many dates as a U.S. pro football team would have played. So if the Coliseum sells itself as a major soccer venue, it really won’t matter whether the stadium ever gets a new National Football League tenant.

It is rarely noted when the U.S. press reports on soccer tragedies like the one in Guatemala City, but one reason they happen is that even big international soccer matches, especially in underdeveloped countries, are held in stadiums that are fairly primitive by U.S. standards. Compared to most of them, the Coliseum is a palace--even if it does not meet the high-rolling specifications of the National Football League.

These days the NFL wants its stadiums to resemble nothing so much as a Las Vegas hotel, complete with luxury suites, exotic concession stands and premium parking--all of which fans can be charged premium prices for.

The NFL’s distaste for the Coliseum was made clear, yet again, in October when a delegation of city officials met with the league’s stadium committee to discuss plans for another renovation of the historic facility. While nice things were said in public, several NFL owners dismissed the Coliseum plan privately. What they really want is a new stadium, preferably somewhere other than South-Central Los Angeles.

But NFL owners can look down their collective noses at the Coliseum all they want. They still need Los Angeles more than we need them. According to the Wall Street Journal, pro football’s television ratings are down 7% this fall. The lack of a team in the nation’s second-biggest TV market has to be part of the problem.

I have no objections to a new football team in town. But let private investors come up with the $300 million to build the NFL a palatial stadium. Taxpayers shouldn’t pay a cent. And if it never happens, L.A. will still have a game plan for the Coliseum: international soccer.