Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum

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Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
The Grand Old Lady
Facility statistics
Location 3911 South Figueroa Street
Los Angeles, California 90037
Broke ground 1922
Opened 1923
Closed Open
Demolished N/A
Owner Los Angeles Coliseum Commission
Operator Spectacor Management Group
Surface Grass
Construction cost $955,000 USD
Architect John Parkinson
Former names
N/A
Tenants
USC Trojans (NCAA) (1923-Present)
UCLA Bruins (NCAA) (-1982)
Summer Olympics (1932&1984)
Los Angeles Rams (NFL) (1946-1979)
Los Angeles Dodgers (MLB) (1958-1961)
Los Angeles Chargers (NFL) (1960)
Los Angeles Raiders (NFL) (1982-1994)
Los Angeles Express (USFL) (1983-1985)
Los Angeles Xtreme (XFL) (2001)
Seating capacity
92,000
For other uses, see Memorial Coliseum (disambiguation) and Coliseum.

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is a large outdoor sports stadium located in Exposition Park in Los Angeles, California, near the campus of the University of Southern California. It is sometimes nicknamed The Grand Old Lady.

Originally built in 1922, the Coliseum served as the primary track and field venue and site of the opening and closing ceremonies of both the 1932 and 1984 Olympic Games. The Olympic cauldron which burned through the Games remains above the peristyle at one end of the stadium as a reminder of this, as do the Olympic rings symbols over one of the main entrances. A pair of life-sized bronze statues of male and female athletes atop a 20,000 pound (9,000 kg) post-and-lintel frame formed the Olympic Gateway created by Robert Graham for the 1984 games. The statues, modeled on a waterpolo player and a sprinter who participated in the games, were noted for their anatomical accuracy.

The Olympic Cauldron is lit during football games, and other special occasions. In 2004, the cauldron was lit non-stop for seven days in tribute to Ronald Reagan, who passed away; and was lit again in April 2005 following the death of Pope John Paul II, who held mass at the Coliseum during his visit to Los Angeles in 1987. The torch was also lit for over a week following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Many other events have been held at the Coliseum over the years, and only a few are listed here. For many years, it served as the home football stadium for both the UCLA Bruins and USC Trojans, although in 1982 UCLA moved its home games to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. USC's agreement to play all its home games at the Coliseum was a contributing factor to its construction. The former Cleveland Rams of the National Football League relocated to the Coliseum in 1946, becoming the Los Angeles Rams; but the team later relocated again, first to Anaheim in 1979, then to St. Louis, Missouri in 1995. In 1960 the American Football League's Los Angeles Chargers played at the Coliseum before relocating to San Diego the next year. In 1982 the Rams were temporarily replaced as tenants by the former Oakland Raiders, however this team subsequently returned to Oakland in 1995, leaving the Coliseum without a professional football tenant for the first time since the close of World War II. The most recent pro football tenant has been the short-lived Los Angeles Xtreme, the first and only champion of the XFL. The Coliseum was also the site of the very first NFL-AFL Championship Game in January 1967, an event since given the modest name of the Super Bowl. It also hosted the Super Bowl in 1973.

Aerial view of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum during a USC football game.
Enlarge
Aerial view of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum during a USC football game.

Other sporting events held at the Coliseum over the years have included Major League Baseball, which was held at the Coliseum when the former Brooklyn Dodgers of the National League relocated to Los Angeles in 1958. The Dodgers played here until Dodger Stadium was completed in time for the 1962 season, despite the fact that the Coliseum's one-tier, oval bowl shape was extremely poorly-suited to baseball. Although ill-suited as a major league baseball field, with its left field line at 251 feet (77 m) and power alley at 320 feet (98 m), it was ideally suited for large paying crowds. Each of the three games of the 1959 World Series drew over 92,000 fans, a record unlikely to be challenged anytime soon, given the smaller seating capacities of today's baseball parks. A May 1959 exhibition game between the Dodgers and the New York Yankees in honor of legendary catcher Roy Campanella drew 93,103, the largest crowd ever to see a baseball game in the Western Hemisphere. The Coliseum also hosted the second 1959 MLB All-Star Game.

a Dodgers game at the Coliseum
Enlarge
a Dodgers game at the Coliseum

The Coliseum was also the site of John F. Kennedy's memorable acceptance speech at the 1960 Democratic Convention. It was during that speech that Kennedy first used the term "the New Frontier."

Renovations

When the Coliseum opened in 1922, it was already the largest stadium in Los Angeles with a capacity of 76,000. However, with the arrival of the Olympics only 10 years later, the stadium was expanded to 101,574 and the now signature torch was added.

For many years the Coliseum was capable of seating over 100,000 spectators, and the capacity for the 1984 Olympics configuration was approximately 88,000. Subsequently, many seats - and the running track - were removed to appease Raiders owner Al Davis, partially in order to make the venue more easily sold out so that his team's game could appear live on L.A. television, which is forbidden by NFL rules unless a game is already sold out at least 72 hours prior to its scheduled kick-off. Some of the removed seats, which were primarily in the end zone, were replaced with new bleachers far closer to the end lines of the playing field. (The combination of the stadium's large, relatively shallow design, along with the presence of the track between the playing field and the stands, meant that some of the former end zone seats were essentially away from the field by the equivalent in length to another football field.)

However, with Davis' Raiders now long gone, and the need for repairs after the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, some of the changes that he had demanded were reversed, and the current configuration is somewhat similar to that used for the 1984 Olympics. USC's regular alternating home games with rivals UCLA and Notre Dame attract a capacity 92,000 person crowd each year. The current official capacity of the Coliseum is 92,516.

There is great debate about the Coliseum's potential as a modern NFL stadium. Although the Coliseum is an important historical sports venue, it is regarded by some as no longer adequate to be the home of a major professional sports organization. Since it was designed before the age of club seats, luxury boxes, and many of the other money-generating amenities that modern football stadiums possess, any professional team moving to the Coliseum will likely have to do extensive renovations. Los Angeles county voters are generally uninterested in appropriating tax revenues toward a new stadium, which would put the costs of renovation on any future tenant. Another factor is its location at the edge of South Los Angeles, which is perceived by many potential fans as a somewhat unsafe part of the city, although the area is considerably safer than it was when the stadium housed two NFL teams. Because of the difficulties that the NFL has had with trying to finance a renovated Coliseum, Rose Bowl or brand new stadium, it has been absent from the 2nd largest media market in America for over a remarkable ten years.

There had been suggestions that the Coliseum should temporarily house the New Orleans Saints for the 2005 NFL season, seeing that the Saints' usual home, the Louisiana Superdome, is unfit and unhabitable for guests in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. However, the NFL announced that the Saints' first home game on September 18 against the New York Giants would instead be played at Giants Stadium on September 19. As for all the other home games, they will be split between Tiger Stadium at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana which is about 80 miles from New Orleans and the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas which is about 540 miles from New Orleans. At this time, there are no plans for where the Saints playoff games will be. However it is unknown whether the Coliseum would be once again be a candidate in hosting Saints' playoff games.

External links


Olympic Stadia

Athens, 1896 | Paris, 1900 | St Louis, 1904 | London, 1908 | Stockholm, 1912 | Berlin, 1916 | Antwerp, 1920 | Paris, 1924 | Amsterdam, 1928 | Los Angeles, 1932 | Berlin, 1936 | Helsinki, 1940 | London, 1944 | London, 1948 | Helsinki, 1952 | Melbourne, 1956 | Rome, 1960 | Tokyo, 1964 | Mexico City, 1968 | Munich, 1972 | Montreal, 1976 | Moscow, 1980 | Los Angeles, 1984 | Seoul, 1988 | Barcelona, 1992 | Atlanta, 1996 | Sydney, 2000 | Athens, 2004 | Beijing, 2008 | London, 2012

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