Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium will turn into the sixth stadium in California to host a Tremendous Bowl. (Photograph by Will Lester/SCNG)
On Feb. 13, Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium — the costliest sports activities venue ever inbuilt america — will turn into the sixth California stadium to host the Tremendous Bowl.
To mirror on these stadiums—5 nonetheless open, one not too long ago deceased—is to see how a lot has modified in a state recognized for mass leisure. As California, just like the Tremendous Bowl, has grown grander and glitzier, it’s additionally turn into extra unique and disconnected.
I grew up close to the Rose Bowl, one among three California Tremendous Bowl stadiums created a century in the past, after the final nice international pandemic. Stanford Stadium got here first in 1921, constructed for $211,000. The Rose Bowl adopted in 1922, and the os Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 1923. All three nonetheless stand.
In addition they nonetheless signify the egalitarian beliefs, if not the uglier realities, of their time. All three stadiums have been massive, easy bowls that with large capacities, every accommodating 85,000-plus members of California’s quickly rising inhabitants. These bold arenas have been meant to serve the state’s surging larger schooling sector and its football-centered faculty tradition. However in addition they hosted main civic occasions, together with presidential nomination acceptance speeches by Herbert Hoover (Stanford) and John Kennedy in 1960 (L.A. Coliseum)
Not like right this moment’s tall and ponderous professional stadiums, these modest, low-slung, one-level buildings hook up with their environments. Stanford Stadium is on campus. The L.A. Coliseum is in Exposition Park. And the Rose Bowl is framed by the San Gabriel Mountains and surrounded by a public recreation space.
All three have had Twenty first-century renovations that scale back seating capability and supply separate areas for the rich. Nonetheless, they continue to be all too charming, and too accommodating of common followers for right this moment’s professional sports activities franchises, which choose stadiums filled with company suites and premium seats that generate most income. Which is why the Coliseum hosted its second and ultimate Tremendous Bowl in 1973, Stanford held only one Tremendous Bowl in 1985, and the Rose Bowl hasn’t had as soon as since 1993.
For one technology, the Nationwide Soccer League turned to San Diego, and its 1967 stadium, generally known as San Diego Stadium, Jack Murphy Stadium, and by different company names. It was a lot taller and extra versatile (baseball’s Padres performed there) than the previous bowls, however felt bland, like America’s post-war consensus.
It hosted Tremendous Bowls in 1988, 1998, and 2003—then got here underneath criticism from the Nationwide Soccer League and the native crew, the San Diego Chargers, for being outdated. When San Diegans refused, correctly, to subsidize development of a brand new stadium, the Chargers moved to L.A. to share the brand new SoFi with the Rams. In 2020, San Diego offered San Diego State College the place, which was demolished final 12 months. It will likely be changed with an enormous multi-purpose growth.
Now, and going ahead, California Tremendous Bowls belong to 2 new high-tech, screen-filled stadiums. Neither is in our largest cities, as a result of L.A., San Francisco, San Diego, and Oakland don’t must waste billions on professional sports activities franchises to attract financial exercise. As a substitute, these stadiums are in smaller cities —Santa Clara and Inglewood—determined to draw consideration of their massive metro areas.
Sadly, each venues lack intimacy and infrequently disappoint, not not like California itself.
In Santa Clara, Levi’s Stadium was inbuilt 2014 and hosted the Tremendous Bowl in 2016, but it surely has been dogged by complaints about site visitors, parking, and design. The 49ers and the town have fought legally and politically over the phrases of the stadium deal, with some native leaders expressing regrets about searching for the crew within the first place.
In Inglewood, SoFi Stadium, like so many California mega-projects, was dogged by development delays and value overruns that doubled the value from $2.5 billion to $5 billion.
SoFi is so over-the-top that it may well really feel like parody. It has an costly roof that’s pointless in a Southern California with little rain. Its entrance and gathering areas really feel overly massive, as if the authoritarian regime that constructed them have been making an attempt to awe you into submission.
And whereas these century-old open bowls related to your environment, SoFi is its personal self-contained world — out of your seat, you'll be able to solely see items of the leisure district being constructed round it. Reinforcing this separation, SoFi doesn’t have a cease on L.A.’s increasing Metro rail system.
So, you received’t discover me anyplace close to Inglewood on Tremendous Bowl Sunday. I’ll watch the sport on TV with vaccinated associates. However what I’m actually trying ahead to is driving my bike across the Rose Bowl that morning.
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Sq..