stadium

From Ryan Kartje: Since it first opened in 1923, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum has been the sole home of USC football. No major sports team in the city’s history has played in the same venue for longer.

But after more than a century spent by USC in the city’s iconic stadium by the campus, The Times learned that the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games likely will force USC to find a new home for its football team in 2028, with the likeliest option being SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

People with knowledge of the situation not authorized to discuss it publicly told The Times that the Coliseum would not be ready for the start of the college football season in September 2028 because of the $100-million temporary track that’s being built on top of the Coliseum field to host the track-and-field competition at the L.A. Olympics and Paralympic Games.

The logistics still are being worked out with LA28, the city’s organizing committee, and USC has not made a final decision about where the 2028 football season will be played. A source said the school hasn’t officially determined whether the Coliseum field could be ready later in the fall, perhaps to host a portion of USC’s 2028 home schedule. But even if it is logistically possible, it’s not clear that USC’s athletic department would find that arrangement in its best interest, given it would mean uprooting the team midseason or spending a long stretch of the season away from L.A.

“USC and LA28 are working in lockstep on all logistics for the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” USC athletics spokesperson Cody Worsham said in a statement. “We will share details with the public when they are finalized.”

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DAVE ROBERTS HELPS UCLA

From Ben Bolch: Dave Roberts might have just contributed to another monumental steal.

UCLA landed what could be the coup of the college football coaching carousel with some assistance from the celebrated Dodgers manager and Boston folk hero whose stolen base in the 2004 playoffs sparked the Red Sox’s run to their first World Series title in nearly a century.

This time, Roberts came out of the advisory bullpen to help his alma mater snag what it hopes is a championship coach in Bob Chesney.

“I just see him as a guy that failure’s not an option,” Roberts told The Times of the coach who has agreed to a five-year, $33.75-million contract. “He’s gonna win. I think I have a pretty good gut and read on people and I couldn’t have more conviction in coach Chesney.”

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WHICH DODGERS WILL PLAY IN THE WBC?

From Jack Harris: The 2026 World Baseball Classic begins in less than three months.

Between now and then, the Dodgers will have to have some “delicate” conversations with their star trio of Japanese pitchers.

As of now, Dodgers front-office officials said at this week’s winter meetings, no final decisions have been made about whether Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki will participate in the tournament, nor if Shohei Ohtani (who has already confirmed his participation) will pitch in addition to hitting.

“We’re still working through that,” said president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, who met with Team Japan manager Hirokazu Ibata at the Signia by Hilton Orlando this week.

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Shohei Ohtani made ‘very big contribution’ to help Dodgers teammate’s mother battle cancer

CLIPPERS LOSE AGAIN

Amen Thompson’s three-point play with 17.2 seconds left helped the Houston Rockets to a 115-113 win over the Clippers on Thursday night.

Thompson tipped in Alperen Sengun’s miss to break a 110-110 tie, was fouled by Kris Dunn and hit the free throw. The putback came off Houston’s third offensive rebound of the possession and 21st of the night.

Thompson made eight of 12 from the field and finished with 20 points, nine rebounds and eight assists.

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Clippers box score

NBA standings

DUCKS’ WINNING STREAK ENDS

Anders Lee scored twice and had two assists, and David Rittich made 31 saves as the New York Islanders beat the Ducks 5-2 on Thursday night.

Simon Holmstrom had a goal and two assists and defensemen Travis Mitchell and Ryan Pulock each scored as the Islanders won for the fifth time in six games.

Leo Carlsson and Troy Terry scored for the Ducks, who had their three-game winning streak ended.

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Ducks summary

NHL standings

THIS DAY IN SPORTS HISTORY

1937 — Rookie Sammy Baugh throws second-half touchdown passes of 55, 78 and 33 yards to overcome a 14-7 Chicago lead and give the Washington Redskins a 28-21 victory over the Chicago Bears for the NFL championship.

1953 — Maurice Richard of the Montreal Canadiens becomes the NHL’s all-time leading scorer with a goal and two assists in a 7-2 victory against the New York Rangers. Richard finishes the game with 611 points, one more than injured linemate Elmer Lach, who has held the record since February 1952.

1965 — Chicago’s Gale Sayers scores six touchdowns with 336 combined yards to lead the Bears to a 61-20 rout of the San Francisco 49ers. The six TDs give Sayers an NFL-record 21 for the season. Sayers’ first touchdown is a reception, the next four rushing and the final, an 85-yard punt return.

1968 — Arthur Ashe becomes first Black person be ranked No. 1 in tennis.

1971 — Bobby Hull of the Chicago Blackhawks scores his 1,000th point with an assist in the first period of a 5-3 victory over the Minnesota North Stars.

1977 — NBA Commissioner Larry O’Brien fines Kermit Washington $10,000 and suspends the Lakers forward for at least 60 days (26 games) for punching Houston’s Rudy Tomjanovich during a game on Dec. 9. The suspension is the longest ever in NBA history and the fine is the maximum permissible under league rules.

1986 — James “Bonecrusher” Smith knocks out Tim Witherspoon in the first round to win the WBA heavyweight title in New York.

1987 — Guard Mookie Blaylock leads Oklahoma to an NCAA-record 33 steals with 13 in a 152-84 victory over Centenary.

1990 — Connecticut uses a stifling press and quickness to jump to a 32-0 lead en route to an 85-32 victory over New Hampshire. New Hampshire plays 11 minutes and 48 seconds before scoring its first point.

2015 — Keenan Reynolds ends his Navy career with a clean sweep against Army. Reynolds rushes for two touchdowns and throws for another score to lead the No. 21 Midshipmen to their 14th straight win over the Black Knights, 21-17. Reynolds is the first quarterback over the 116-game series to go 4-0.

2015 — The Golden State Warriors’ NBA-record start ends at 24 wins when the Milwaukee Bucks beat them 108-95.

2016 — Tom Brady connects with Chris Hogan for a 79-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter to help the New England Patriots overcome a sloppy second half and claim a 30-23 win over the Baltimore Ravens. Brady throws for 406 yards and three touchdowns, becoming the fourth NFL quarterback with at least 450 career touchdown passes. He also throws just his second interception of the season.

2021 — Dutchman Max Verstappen wins Formula 1 Drivers’ Championship.

2024 — Six-time Super Bowl winning coach Bill Belichick is introduced as next head football coach at the University of North Carolina.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

Since it first opened in 1923, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum has been the sole home of USC football. No major sports team in the city’s history has played in the same venue for longer.

But after more than a century spent in the city’s iconic stadium, The Times has learned that the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games will likely force USC to find a new home for its football team in 2028, with the likeliest option being SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

Multiple people with knowledge of the situation not authorized to discuss it publicly told The Times that the Coliseum would not be ready for the start of college football season in September 2028 because of the $100-million temporary track that’s being built on top of the Coliseum field to host the track-and-field competition at the L.A. Olympics and Paralympic Games.

The logistics are still being worked out with L.A. 2028, and USC has not made a final decision about where the Trojans’ 2028 football season will be played. A source said the school hasn’t officially determined whether the Coliseum field could be ready later in the fall, perhaps to host a portion of USC’s 2028 home schedule. But even if it is logistically possible, it’s not clear that USC’s athletic department would find that arrangement in its best interest, given it would mean uprooting the team midseason or spending a long stretch of the 2028 slate away from L.A.

“USC and LA28 are working in lockstep on all logistics for the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” USC athletics spokesperson Cody Worsham said in a statement. “We will share details with the public when they are finalized.”

SoFi Stadium officials declined to comment when asked about USC’s possible move to the venue in 2028.

With the closing ceremonies of the Paralympic Games set for Aug. 27, 2028, there would be just two weeks for the temporary track to be removed and the grass field below to be restored ahead of USC’s currently scheduled 2028 home opener on Sept. 9. Multiple people told The Times that’s not a feasible timeline for a structure LA28 chairman Casey Wasserman once called “the most expensive and probably complicated thing we actually have to build” ahead of the 2028 Games.

This isn’t a new problem at USC. Discussions about the plausibility of the football program sharing the Coliseum with the Olympics in 2028 trace back well before current athletic director Jennifer Cohen was hired in 2023. The belief at one point, according to a person familiar with those discussions, was that with some clever scheduling, USC would only have to miss a home game or two.

Now, according to multiple people familiar with the situation, USC is expected to spend the 2028 season at SoFi Stadium, which hosts the NFL’s Rams and Chargers. By that point, it may also be the home field of the city’s other Big Ten football team.

UCLA has already stated it plans to trade the Rose Bowl, where it has played since 1982, for the modern SoFi Stadium, in spite of a lease agreement that runs through 2044. The city of Pasadena and the Rose Bowl Operating Company have since sued the school and SoFi Stadium’s ownership in hopes of blocking the Bruins’ move.

If UCLA forges on with plans to abandon the Rose Bowl in 2026 for SoFi, all four of the city’s major football teams could be playing under the same roof two years later.

Those logistics, however, pale in comparison to what it will take to host Olympic track and field at the Coliseum in 2028, in the same stadium where the competition was held almost a century earlier. The biggest obstacle LA28 faced using an iconic venue that hosted the 1984 Olympics is that there wasn’t enough room on the Coliseum floor for an Olympic-sized track.

Renovations in the early 1990s added 14 rows of seats at the bottom of the bowl, shrinking the size of the Coliseum field. The solution requires installation of a track 11 feet above the field that stretches over the first few rows of stadium seating to met Olympic standards.

To build the temporary track, the Coliseum’s turf and the dirt beneath it will be scraped away, down to the stadium’s concrete base where columns will be placed about every 10 feet. That construction at the Coliseum is expected to begin immediately after the Trojans finish their home football schedule sometime in November 2027.

Bill Hanway, the executive vice president for AECOM — the infrastructure consulting firm hired to oversee LA28’s preparations — told The Times in June 2024 that the track was “an incredibly complex build” in “an incredibly tight space.”

Taking track down will be its own challenge, one that will take longer than the two-week window between the end of the Games and the beginning of USC’s 2028 slate. When a similar structure was built for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland, the soccer team that played in the stadium — Queen’s Park FC — didn’t return for more than a year.

Unless that timeline can be slashed, the Trojans will spend the 2028 season switching off Saturdays with their rivals, who, for one year, would be across-the-hallway as opposed to across town.

USC and UCLA shared the Coliseum for 54 years before the Bruins moved to the Rose Bowl in 1982. For 33 of those years, the Coliseum also hosted the Rams on Sundays.

If that feels too crowded to USC, the Rose Bowl is the only other option in town — and suddenly seems to be in serious need of a tenant.

But as of now, according to a person familiar with the situation, SoFi Stadium is the only venue that’s been discussed as a potential temporary home.

Kroenke Sports & Entertainment and SoFi Stadium have been added as defendants in an amended complaint filed by the Rose Bowl Operating Co. and the city of Pasadena in Los Angeles Superior Court as part of the plaintiffs’ bid to keep UCLA’s football team as a tenant at the Rose Bowl.

In new court documents filed late Thursday, attorneys for the Rose Bowl Operating Co. and the city of Pasadena contended that “upon information and belief,” in late 2024 or early 2025, Kroenke Sports & Entertainment executives openly suggested that SoFi Stadium was pursuing UCLA, “demonstrating the SoFi defendants’ intent to induce UCLA’s breach and disturb UCLA’s performance of the agreement” from a contract that binds the Bruins to play at the Rose Bowl through the 2043 season.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys further alleged that the SoFi Stadium defendants knew about UCLA’s agreement with the Rose Bowl “yet coordinated with UCLA to breach its contractual obligations and abandon the Rose Bowl stadium in favor of playing its home football games at SoFi Stadium.” The plaintiffs’ attorneys contended that SoFi Stadium officials were aware that such discussions would violate the school’s agreement with the Rose Bowl, “thereby acting with malice in luring UCLA football away from its contractual home in Pasadena.”

Furthermore, the plaintiffs contended in their allegations that “as a direct and proximate cause of the SoFi defendants’ conduct, and as described herein, plaintiffs have suffered irreparable harm necessitating equitable relief and for which monetary damages alone would be inadequate. Plaintiffs have also incurred significant monetary damages, including economic loss, consequential damages, and other general and specific damages, in an amount to be determined at trial, but which amount could exceed one billion dollars.”

UCLA has repeatedly said in public statements that it continued to evaluate its options for its future football home. Representatives for UCLA and SoFi Stadium have said they would not comment on ongoing legal matters.

As part of the amended complaint, the plaintiffs’ attorneys also are contending that UCLA should not be allowed to abandon its commitment to playing at the Rose Bowl after the stadium approved and began implementation of at least $28.5 million in construction for a field-level club in the south end zone. The plaintiffs attorneys said the project was moving forward after UCLA made assurances last spring and summer that it was not leaving the stadium for the foreseeable future.

The plaintiffs reiterated in their amended complaint that they have suffered “irreparable harm necessitating equitable relief and for which monetary damages alone would be inadequate,” which they claim entitled them to force UCLA to keep playing at the Rose Bowl through the end of its contract.

As part of the amended complaint, the plaintiffs also claimed that UCLA had “a breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing” that obligated them to act honestly and fairly.

Attorneys for both sides are scheduled to meet in court next month for a hearing on UCLA’s motion to compel arbitration, a move that if granted would keep the matter out of public view. The plaintiffs’ attorneys have said they oppose such a move and believe the matter was of great public interest.

Hundreds of community members packed a meeting room Thursday to tell the Metro board of directors whether they favored or opposed Frank McCourt’s proposed gondola to Dodger Stadium. The board already signaled its intent to approve the project without any discussion among the directors, but then the board chairman announced it would not listen to any community members before voting.

That touched off an extraordinary rebellion. In an act of defiance seldom seen within the staid and often formulaic halls of bureaucracy, the public shut down the meeting.

As the meeting opened, board chairman Fernando Dutra explained that the public would get its say after the vote.

He promptly was drowned out with chants of “Let us speak!” from antigondola forces and responses of “You already spoke!” from pro-gondola forces, since this meeting was Metro’s fourth on the gondola, and its second specifically related to the adoption of a revised environmental impact report.

Dutra attempted to calm the crowd by saying, “Public comments are allowed at the end of the meeting.” That instead inflamed the public, and the chants only grew louder and more repetitive, and Dutra threatened to have Metro officers clear the room.

The directors opted to retreat to a private room for 75 minutes, dealing with other business and then deciding what to do about the persistent public.

In the meeting room, chants ebbed and flowed from both sides. The antigondola forces passed around a bullhorn. The pro-gondola forces danced around the room. More than a dozen Metro and Los Angeles Police Department officers stood guard, positioning themselves between the public and the empty dais.

The directors sent word that they would relent. They would provide one hour for public comment before the vote.

Calm prevailed, and the directors returned. Of the 52 public speakers, 42 — including three members of the Los Angeles City Council — spoke against the gondola project.

Dutra congratulated the board for coming up with “the right process” to hear from the public.

“This is what happens when you have a democratic process,” Dutra told the crowd, with a straight face.

The crowd got its say, more than an hour late, after the board’s effort to delay public comment until what might have been hours after the vote triggered an uprising. Then the vote was taken — and, as expected, the gondola project was approved.

The pro-gondola forces applauded. The antigondola forces chanted again: “Shame on you!”

Next steps? And how much?

An artist’s rendering of a potential gondola to Dodger Stadium.

(Courtesy of Aerial Rapid Transit Technologies/Kilograph)

With Metro certifying the revised environmental impact report, various state agencies and the Los Angeles City Council will consider whether to approve the gondola project. The council is unlikely to take up the project until late next year, after it receives a study evaluating traffic around Dodger Stadium and options to relieve it.

In 2023 the environmental impact report projected a construction cost of $385 million to $500 million. Construction costs only go up, and a project spokesman this week did not provide an updated cost estimate.

In 2024, Metro’s initial approval required that Metro staff work with the organization responsible for getting the gondola up and running to “provide quarterly updates to the Metro board on the project’s progress and financing.”

Those updates were “not produced because work on the project was paused during a litigation process,” a Metro spokeswoman said.

Thursday’s approval means that litigation process is over, so an updated cost estimate should be available in the spring. The project has been promised as privately financed, but no financing agreements have been publicly disclosed.

Bass speaks

The City Council last month voted 12-1 to approve a resolution urging Metro to kill the gondola project. The resolution went to Mayor Karen Bass, who neither signed it nor vetoed it.

The resolution was sponsored by the three councilmembers with districts closest to Dodger Stadium.

“The way the council feels is important to me,” Bass told The Times. “But, if a member from that district is passionate about a project, then the other members are in support of that.

“There is much more time for things to be worked out. I just did not feel that it was appropriate to stop it now.”

Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez, whose district includes Dodger Stadium, said she has worked hard to develop support from her council colleagues and provide them with alternatives to the gondola by the time the council is expected to vote on the project next fall.

“In a year from now, you will see the fruition of that,” Hernandez said. “My hope is that my colleagues will see that and keep helping us move in that direction.

“I hope that people take what the council has said seriously. To get a 12-1 vote on any issue, particularly on an issue like this, is not an easy lift. It’s a big deal.”

Bass said she would like to explore how the community can leverage the gondola to address neighborhood priorities.

“My interest in the project, overall, is in the community benefits — the potential benefit to, most notably, the area around Homeboy Industries, and Chinatown. I’ve been very saddened at the deterioration of the Chinatown that I knew growing up,” she said.

“There are groups pushing that there be more resources put there, and that Frank McCourt contribute more to Chinatown development and redevelopment and revitalization.”

The Scottish FA has secured a “multi-million-pound, long-term partnership” for the naming rights of the national stadium.

Barclays Hampden will become the new name in the first deal of its kind for the historic Glasgow ground.

The financial services company will also partner with the men’s and women’s Scottish Cup, which are sponsored by Scottish Gas, and become the main sponsor for the Next Gen Girls’ Performance Programme.

“In the course of the conversations we’ve had over the past few months, Barclays’ desire to support Scottish football – across the levels – has been clear,” said SFA chief executive Ian Maxwell.

“The impact of their investment will be felt within the walls of Barclays Hampden and far beyond – not least helping fuel the kind of programmes we run that harness the power of football and make an everyday impact in Scottish society.”

Scotland men last month secured qualification for next year’s World Cup, the draw for which takes place on Friday, while Scotland women will begin qualification for the 2027 World Cup next year.

Steve Clarke’s men and Melissa Andreatta’s women play their home games at the national stadium, which also hosts the semi-finals and finals in the Scottish Cup and League Cup tournaments.

The final of the League Cup will be held later this month between St Mirren and holders Celtic on 14 December.

Barclays’ Tom Corbett said the London-based firm “are thrilled to be ending the year with the addition of the Scottish home of football to our partnership portfolio”.

“Hampden is a fantastic venue in a fantastic city, and this new partnership will enable us to further support the next generation of football fans and players,” he added.