In a college sports ecosystem driven by nothing but dollars, UCLA sure feels like it’s betting big at the roulette wheel.
Bruin Report Online reported Sunday that those within the UCLA athletic department see it as a foregone conclusion the school will move its home football games from the Rose Bowl to SoFi Stadium, the home of the Rams and Chargers.
The impetus for the move, local reporting suggests, is better access to premium seating and potential financial gains to be made from them compared to the historic, but aging, Rose Bowl.
But for a football program already struggling to sell seats, moving to an NFL stadium for the sake of high-end tickets feels at the least short-sighted.
UCLA occupies a wonky place in the highest rungs of college athletics. The move to the Big Ten was a way to cash a bigger check for an athletic department whose finances have been upside-down for the better part of a decade.
The football program hasn’t helped the cause, as the Bruins haven’t eclipsed nine wins since 2014. There’s also the recent firing of coach DeShaun Foster, who was ill-equipped to run the program in the wake of Chip Kelly’s 11th hour move in 2024 to become Ohio State’s offensive coordinator. None of that includes AD Martin Jarmond staving off calls for his job amid questions about his hiring of Foster.
Whether the criticism of Jarmond is fair isn’t really the point. Chasing dollars in a stadium that lacks any tangible tie to a fanbase already indifferent toward the product feels like a problem.
That doesn’t include the legal ramifications for UCLA backing out of a Rose Bowl lease slated to run through 2044. (The city of Pasadena and Rose Bowl Operating Company filed an emergency motion Monday seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to stop UCLA from moving.)
UCLA recorded $16.4 million in ticket sales during the 2024 fiscal year, per the Knight Newhouse College Athletics Database. That ranked 13 of the 16 public schools in the league, notably behind Illinois ($19.8 million), Minnesota ($22.7 million) and Purdue ($22.9 million) and only narrowly ahead of Big Ten bottom-dwellers Rutgers ($14.7 million) and Maryland ($14.8 million).
Moving to SoFi Stadium isn’t going to change those facts dramatically. A winning football team is generally the only real solution.
Anyways, good luck to the next UCLA football coach. Hopefully people show up.
