With all the focus on the UCLA/Big Ten move, a somewhat tangential piece of history appeared in the LA Times explaining why UCLA doesn't have - but might have had - a football stadium on campus. Excerpt below:
More than a half-century ago, UCLA students nearly got to experience the buzz of home games much closer to home. Momentum was building for construction of an on-campus stadium in 1965, back when the Bruins played their home games at the Coliseum. UCLA chancellor Franklin D. Murphy promoted the construction of a $6.5-million, 44,000-seat stadium that would be nestled into the hillside west of the student athletic fields. It would be financed by student incidental fees, athletic income and pledges from alumni and donor groups. A feasibility study was conducted. Architecture plans were drawn and a stadium model was displayed in the student union. Among other amenities, the stadium would house a regulation football field plus a 440-yard, nine-lane track, outdoor lighting, concession stands, restrooms, scoreboards, a two-level press box, team dressing and shower rooms, management offices and ticket booths.
There was pushback. Students twice voted against the proposal and staged a protest outside Murphy’s office. The campus newspaper, the Daily Bruin, ran an editorial opposing the stadium and the use of student fees to fund it. Most vocal in their opposition was the Westwood Community Planning Committee directors who represented homeowners in Bel-Air, Brentwood, Westwood and South Westwood. “It was the neighbors who didn’t like the possibility of any parking problems and didn’t like the possibility of traffic and of noise and interruptions five days a year,” Charles E. Young, the former UCLA chancellor who at the time was immersed in stadium planning efforts as Murphy’s vice chancellor, said this week.
Young tried his best to assuage the homeowners’ concerns, telling them most people going to the game would already be on campus and parking would not be an issue given the availability of spaces on weekends. It was a losing battle. Siding with the homeowners were Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown and University of California regent Dorothy Chandler. Brown courted the votes, not to mention the vast political contributions, of those wealthy homeowners in his 1966 reelection campaign against Ronald Reagan. Chandler, the mother of then-Los Angeles Times publisher Otis Chandler, appeared beholden to those same homeowners who had helped her fundraising efforts for the Music Center downtown.
Ultimately, the regents delivered a double setback to UCLA’s stadium efforts, Young said. Not only was the proposed football stadium nixed, but any stadium built on that spot could also not later be enlarged into a facility that could house a football team...
Full story at https://www.latimes.com/sports/ucla/story/2022-09-29/ucla-on-campus-stadium-1965-plan-dashed-rose-bowl-drake.
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https://ia601402.us.archive.org/25/items/big-ten/no%20stadium.mp3
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