Jun 26th, 2010
The Pac-10’s expansion to 12 teams has provided only one noticeable benefit for football fans and players – a conference championship game.
To which we respond, “OK, so where is this grand television event going to be played?”
Gulp.
Los Angeles Stadium -- so attractive, so clean, so perfect, so non-existent
There is an ideal venue on the drawing board, but unfortunately they don’t play games on the drawing board (much like they don’t play games on paper).
It doesn’t have to be at the same place every year. In fact, it would nice to move it around.
Although the Southeastern Conference seems to have settled on the Georgia Dome as its permanent championship game site, the Big 12 and the Atlantic Coast Conference have had several venues. The ACC will play its 2010 game at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C., and the Big 12 will play this season’s title game at Jerry Jones Memorial Stadium, known to those outside Dallas as Cowboys Stadium. All three have seating capacities that exceed 71,000, and all three are homes to NFL teams. Take note of that.
The Big Ten (or whatever misnomer they choose for that 12-team conference) presumably will have a championship game when Nebraska comes aboard, and Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Indianapolis Colts, seems like an obvious venue, at least until Minnesota gets its stadium built.
Someday, of course, these games can be any place in the world, because anybody anywhere will be able to attend the games in a three-dimensional virtual reality world established in our living room. We just hope they have attractive 3-D glasses by then. It suggests we should begin looking at the biggest football stadiums in Europe, even though football over there means something qute different.
Here’s a musical look at some those intriguing possibilities for the year 2025:
Let’s return from that bit of sci-fi reverie to the Pac-12′s present stadium issue. From where we sit (which is in a comfortable chair watching the USA-Ghana soccer game), only four venues seem to make sense for the Pac-12 title game, and we’ve got it all arranged. We’re just waiting for commissioner Larry Scott to call us up so we can give him the lineup for the first four years. But we will leave you in suspense while we list all the possibilities.
There are 11 possible sites, although only 10 actually exist and one of those is in another country. Angel Stadium might have been the perfect site — a decade ago, before it was made into one of those cozy, retro, ah-now-this-is-baseball, baseball-only stadiums (you know, the plural of stadium can be stadia, but we can’t imagine John Madden saying, “Boom, the 49ers got a thing going on that play, and, Whap, I don’t think they could pulled that thing off, Bang, in many other stadia in the league”).
Going in reverse alphabetical order (Why should words starting with Y or Z automtically be placed at the back of the line?):
1. University of Phoenix Stadium – Glendale, Ariz. Opened: 2006. Capacity: 72,200. Home football team: Arizona Cardinals.
2. Qwest Field – Seattle. Opened: 2002. Capacity: 67,000. Homefootball team: Seattle Seahawks.
3. Qualcomm Park – San Diego. Opened: 1967. Capacity: 71,500. Home football team: San Diego Chargers.
4. Rose Bowl – Pasadena. Opened: 1922. Capacity: 92,542. Home football team: UCLA.
5. Oakland Coliseum (or whatever it’s called this week) – Oakland. Opened: 1966. Capacity: 63,132. Home football team: Oakland Raiders.
6. Los Angeles Coliseum – Los Angeles. Opened: 1923. Capacity: 93,607. Home football team: USC.
7. Los Angeles Stadium – Inductry, Calif. Opened: Only in our minds. Capacity: 75,000. Home team: the next NFL team Los Angeles gets.
8. Invesco Field – Denver. Opened: 2001. Capacity: 76,125. Home football team: Denver Broncos.
9. Candlestick Park – San Francisco. Opened: 1960. Football capacity: 65,732. Home football team: San Francisco 49ers.
10. Azteca Stadium – Mexico City. Opened: 1966. Capacity: 114,600 or 112,000 or 105,000, whatever you happen to believe. Home team: Mexico national futbol team and Club America futbol team.
11. AT&T Park – San Francisco. Opened: 2000. Capacity: 45,000. Home team: Cal in 2011 (and maybe 2012 if they don’t get that Cal stadium ready).
All right, all right, you may consider Azteca Stadium a joke, and, well, yeah, maybe it is. But it sure would be cool to have a Pac-10 (we mean Pac-12) football title game there. More than 132,000 folks showed up to watch Julio Cesar Chavez fight Greg Haugen there. And Larry Scott could certainly run with the publicity and marketing possibilities. They had more than 100,000 folks there when the 49ers played the Cardinals, and people would show up, despite the smog, earthquake and volcano concerns. No other conference could claim to play its conferecne title game at the site of two World Cups and the 1968 Olympic Games, where John Carlos and Tommie Smith made their statement about America’s racial inequality. Yeah, being 1,500 miles from Los Angeles in a country that speaks a diffeent language makes it a tough sell, but 43 percent of Californians can speak a language other than English and by 2020, California will have a Hispanic majority. Why not get ahead of the curve?
OK, we know it won’t happen, so let’s return to reality.
Ivesco is the only one of these venues that would have weather issues in December, and you can’t have that, plus Denver is not really Pac-10 country, despite the inclusion of Colorado.
AT&T would be absolutely perfect – if it had 25,000 more seats, and Candlestick Park just does not seem like a place the conference’s showpiece event should be held. Compare it to Bank of America Stadium, the Georgia Dome and Cowboys Stadium and . . . well, you get the idea.
The Oakland Coliseum has possibilities, and could work into the roation, but there are reasons Cal did not want to play its 2011 games there. And somehow Al Davis would muck of the negotiations to get the game played there.
The Rose Bowl might work, but, come on, it’s the Rose Bowl. That’s where you play the Rose Bowl, darn it, not some Rose Bowl preliminary act. The Rose Bowl folks won’t go for it.
Qualcomm would be warm enough, but San Diego is not the right site, and Qualcomm has the same appearance issues that Candlestick does.
That leaves us with the L.A. Coliseum, Qwest Field, University of Phoenix Stadium and Los Angeles Stadium. All four would be fine and offer different advantages and disadvantages. The L.A. Coliseum is big enough and is in the biggest media market on the West Coast, but the place is old, and it’s not a good idea to hold a title game on the home field of a possible participant.
Qwest Field is beautiful, and its retractable roof makes it a great place to showcase the event, but it’s in Seattle, which is not L.A. or the Bay Area, the two biggest West Coast markets.
The same description applies to University of Phoenix Stadium, but it will host this coming season’s national championship game, so it certainly qualifies for a conference title game.
Finally, there is Los Angeles Stadium, which is about as perfect as you can get – beautiful new facility, 75,000 seats, located in the West Coast media center and home to an NFL team. It does have one small drawback, though. It doesn’t exist. The shovels are poised to start moving dirt as soon as an NFL franchise can be lured, but who knows when or if that will happen. It does have its own website, though, and that has to mean something.
So here’s the lineup we propose:
2011: Los Angeles Coliseum. It’s important to have the first one in the L.A. market, and USC won’t be in the game because it will be banned from postseason play.
2012: Qwest Field. A little geographic diversity, home to an NFL team and it would look great on TV.
2013: University of Phoenix Stadium: Same advantages as Qwest minus the water.
2014: Los Angeles Stadium: Maybe it will be built by then, in which case it should be the permanent home of the Pac-12 title game, or whatever the conference’s name is by then.
Problem solved — at least until the conference adds teams from Texas, which will insist on playing the game in their state.
Qwest Field does not have a retractable roof, Safeco Field our baseball stadium does.
You forgot to mention the future 49ers stadium. It is more likely than the LA stadium and should be ready by 2014. The Bay Area is the ideal "neutral" and middle site that is still a big and attractive market. It also is visitable by everyone and a great place to spend a weekend. The current plans are for a site south of the city but a nice site that has city views and close to the ocean is still possible and would look great on TV. The plans for a 72,000 seat stadium fit great with the championship. It can still be rotated with other sites but S.F. should be the primary site once this stadium is built. You will get a ton of Oregon and Oregon St. fans to watch a game there against a USC for instance and the atmosphere would be incredible.
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I drive really sluggish in the ultra-fast lane whereas folks behind me are going insane…. I’m an …….