The stadium no longer captures the same magic.
One of college football’s most iconic stadiums no longer holds the same prestige it once did.
In a recent ranking of Big Ten venues, USA Today’s Paul Myerberg slotted the Rose Bowl in at 17th out of 18 stadiums in the conference.
The home of the UCLA Bruins plays host to the annual Rose Bowl game, and has hosted it 111 times. Myerberg makes an important distinction between the game itself and the building which hosts it.
“There’s the Rose Bowl game – one that has long defined college football’s postseason – and there’s the Rose Bowl itself, which shares an address with the bowl game but little of the pageantry and hoopla (or fans),” he writes.
“UCLA’s home stadium is at least 30 minutes or so from campus, longer depending on traffic, and while the crowd will show up for rivals such as USC there is little in the way of an obvious home-field advantage.”
Other than the inconvenient location compared to campus, the program’s lack of success in recent times contributes to the lack of appeal to attend UCLA games.
The Bruins have not appeared in the AP Top 25 since 2022 and have put together just three winning seasons since 2016. For a program which once consistently found themselves amongst the best in the country, the fall off is evident in their lack of atmosphere in a stadium with so much history.
Category: General Sports
