Donor Brian Kennedy sues USC over practice field naming rights
The L.A. billboard magnate whose name hung over the entrance to USC’s practice football field for a quarter century is suing the school for building a new, $200 million facility over top of it.
Brian Kennedy, a former whose company Regency Outdoor Advertising owns billboards all over Los Angeles, claims in the lawsuit that USC breached its contract by demolishing the practice field to build the Bloom Football Performance Center, which is set to open early next month. The arrival of the state-of-the-art facility and erasure of a field that featured the name of Kennedy and one other donor, according to a complaint obtained by The Times, has caused him “reputational harm,” “embarrassment” and “humiliation.”
“For more than two decades,” the complaint states, “the Field stood as a visible acknowledgment of [Kennedy’s] extraordinary contributions to [USC] and the lasting relationship between [Kennedy] and the University.”
Kennedy was one of USC’s most visible and vocal boosters during its glory years under football coach Pete Carroll. In recent years, Kennedy had also used his billboards to demand the return of former USC running back Reggie Bush’s Heisman Trophy.
But his relationship as a big-time donor to Trojan athletics really began in 1998, when USC was desperate to build a new practice field for new football coach Paul Hackett.
Kennedy told The Times in 2023 that the school came to him after it had trouble finding another wealthy booster to foot the bill. To that point, he’d only made smaller contributions, primarily to the club hockey and golf teams. But eventually, the school convinced Kennedy to fork over $400,000 for the field, under the condition, he said, that he control all aspects of the construction. He also later paid to add turf and an electronic scoreboard to the field.
He also later paid to add turf and an electronic scoreboard to the field.
Kennedy and USC officially entered into an agreement to construct the field in April 1998. According to the complaint, the original agreement to name the field “and any expansion of it” after Kennedy was intended to remain in effect “for the life of the field.”
The original agreement, according to Kennedy, was for the terms of the agreement to remain “for a period of 50 years.” But that language, the complaint notes, was struck from the agreement before the final agreement was drafted a week later.
How the “life” of Howard Jones and Brian Kennedy Field is defined will be especially important to the case. USC has made changes to the practice field and reconfigured it since its original construction. A person familiar with the school’s thinking but not authorized to speak publicly told The Times that the school plans to argue the field had outlived its usefulness.
USC defensive coordinator Gary Patterson directs players during a practice at Howard Jones and Brian Kennedy Field on March 10.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Kennedy did meet with USC officials at one point to try to find a “a mutually acceptable means of preserving and honoring the recognition previously afforded and promised to [him].” But he ultimately felt that USC wasn’t offering “comparable recognition” to his original investment in building a field he saw as part of his legacy.
Now, he’s suing USC for promissory estoppel, fraud, breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing and negligent misrepresentation. Kennedy says in the filing that righting the wrong would mean “enforcement of USC’s promises” as well as “appropriate relief for the plaintiff.”
Even with the new facility opening, the plan at USC, according to a person familiar with the situation, had been to keep the west entrance to the practice field which bears Kennedy’s name, known as Goux’s Gate, untouched. The school also plans to add a plaque to the facility that denotes that it stands on the ground where Brian Kennedy Field once stood.
That wasn’t enough for Kennedy, who says the school has acted “willful, malicious, oppressive, fraudulent” and “despicable” as it planned its facility improvements.
During interviews with The Times in 2023 and 2024, Kennedy expressed a deep love and affection for his alma mater. But for more than a decade, his relationship with USC has been complicated, to say the least.
It first soured over a decade ago, during the tenure of athletic director Pat Haden. Where Kennedy was close to his predecessor, Mike Garrett, he did not get along with Haden. Kennedy was a major proponent of former Trojan assistant Ed Orgeron, who led USC on a magical, late-season run as interim coach in 2013 — and who was infamously passed over for the job in favor of Steve Sarkisian.
Kennedy told The Times he also clashed with Haden’s successor, Lynn Swann, over pledged funding for the Galen Center.
His complaint states that Kennedy, in total, has contributed over $4 million to USC.
Former USC athletic director Mike Bohn made inroads with Kennedy, meeting with him for lunch multiple times. But Kennedy told The Times he felt the same effort hadn’t been made by Bohn’s successor, Jennifer Cohen.
The practice field naming rights proved to be the last straw in what was already a fraught relationship with USC.
