A Coliseum Commission Fumbles Atop Historic Hole in the Ground

Al Davis is the No. 1 Raider and he has made out like a bandit. By the time the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission has exhausted its last legal appeal against Davis, the Oakland-Los Angeles-Irwindale Raiders may be playing at Palm Springs in a domed stadium with real waterfalls and artificial yuccas. Concessions will be by Tiffany & Co. Fans will trade country club memberships for season tickets. For half-time entertainment, Davis will stage a U.S.-Soviet drop kicking competition.

Back in world-class Los Angeles, Memorial Coliseum will be the site of the first annual combined swap meet and off-road-vehicle motocross. The Jim and Tammy Bakker comeback tent meeting will have been cancelled because the Coliseum Commission claimed the Bakkers reneged on their contract. In a verbal agreement, the Bakkers insisted tearfully, the commission acceded to their request for pink and yellow tent stripes. Commission members denied any such arrangement ever was made, claiming they preferred polka dots--of any colors but silver or black.

After this zany 1987 summer of dog-attack hysteria, the proposed dismantling of San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy Valley water supply and the long bomb sending the Raiders to Irwindale, anything’s possible. Anything, in fact, including turning one of the world’s great athletic arenas into a white elephant. In Los Angeles in 1987, white elephant ranks somewhere above pit bull and below gravel pit.

Things could be worse. They probably will be. Thank heaven the Pope still is scheduled to celebrate Mass in the venerable old stadium next month. Davis’ Raiders will be forced to play in the Exposition Park facility a couple more seasons. And, everyone knows the Coliseum will have Trojan football. After all, the field is next to the USC campus.

Trojan football, in fact, was featured on opening day of the Coliseum, Oct. 6, 1923, in a game against Pomona. But some expert Coliseum watchers would not be surprised to see Trojan football go, too. The current USC lease with the Hydra-headed nine-member Coliseum Commission is scheduled to expire one year after the Raiders’. One observer figures it will be Davis’ final revenge to take the Trojans along with him to the Irwindale pits, or wherever else the Raiders may decide to hoist the skull and crossbones.

USC appetites were whetted by the Coliseum renovations allegedly promised the Raiders to make football viewing more pleasant. If the commission could not deal with Davis and his fistfuls of National Football League booty, how can they be expected do satisfy USC? And if Davis beckons Troy to a modern new stadium, as one Coliseum insider put it, “how can SC turn down that offer?” Indeed. If UCLA students can get to Bruin games at the Rose Bowl, USC students could manage to find Irwindale.

After that, could swap meets--and possibly the odd rock concert or two--be far behind? Without any major permanent client providing the income needed to cover maintenance and other expenses, will the city, county and state put up with the budget deficits that are certain to plague the commission’s next-door facilities, Coliseum and Sports Arena?

The major topic this past week, other than finding Irwindale, was how to keep the Raiders in the Coliseum. But most realists consider the Raiders gone from the Coliseum forever, whether or not the deal with Irwindale goes through. Nor do they expect Los Angeles to attract a third NFL team in the foreseeable future.

Topic No. 2 was how to reorganize the Coliseum Commission to provide rational management for the sports complex. The city of Los Angeles volunteered to take over the operation. Some suggested contracting with a private management firm. But any change in the current composition of the commission (three members each from the city, county and state) is bound to trigger political trouble.

Topic No. 2 may be moot anyway. If by some miracle the Coliseum got competent leadership, it probably would be too late to save the Coliseum as a venue for major sports events.

By late last week, Times columnist Jim Murray had concluded that the commission, by scaring off so many good teams--including the Rams, the basketball Lakers, the ice hockey Kings, UCLA and the Raiders--had performed several magic tricks, including turning a magnificent 103,000-seat amphitheater into “the world’s biggest flower pot.” Others wondered if the Coliseum, just about the length of a supertanker, could be reflagged and put under Kuwaiti management. A Southland water agency official sized it up as a possible reservoir in the case of drought. “Find out how many acre-feet it would hold,” he told an aide.

Former Coliseum Commission member Joseph R. Cerrell said the facility’s major value now is as a historic monument. Recently back from Rome, Cerrell joked about wanting the tour concession, just as modern Italians show off the older Coliseum. In fact, tour buses were brought to the L.A. Coliseum during the year preceding the 1984 Olympic Games and former Ram Ollie Matson served as guide.

The Coliseum is paid for, but money still is owed on the Sports Arena. Cerrell proposed that the the commission give the arena to USC “and hope that they would maintain it.”

What about the unthinkable final solution: tear the Coliseum down and use the prime property for development, anything from mini-malls to high rises? “Wouldn’t the developers have a field day?” Cerrell asked, pun intended.

That is, however, heresy to anyone who reveres the structure’s past glories--where Knute Rockne coached, where Billy Gramm preached, where John F. Kennedy accepted the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination, where 105,236 witnessed the 1947 USC-Notre Dame game, where Jack Dempsey fought--the only stadium to host the Super Bowl, the World Series and two Olympics.

Historians beat developers to it and the Coliseum probably can never be wrecked, except by age and neglect. The Coliseum was declared both a national and state historic landmark in the fall of 1984. Even the Coliseum Commission agreed, ratifying that decision in the summer of 1987.