Inglewood’s oversized, overpriced SoFi Stadium—the most expensive stadium ever built in the United States—is hosting Super Bowl LVI. SoFi is the sixth California stadium to hold the game since the first Super Bowl was held in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 1967.

To think back on those stadiums—five still open and operating, one recently deceased—is to see how much is changing in a state known for mass entertainment and global spectacles.

As California, like the Super Bowl, has become bigger, glitzier, and gaudier, it’s also become more exclusive, and more disconnected.

I’ve witnessed some of this in real time, tagging along with my father to the three California Super Bowls he covered as a West Coast correspondent for the Washington Post. I also grew up in the shadow of one of those six stadiums—Pasadena’s Rose Bowl.

The Rose Bowl is one of three California Super Bowl stadiums created a century ago, in the burst of institution building that followed the last great global pandemic. Stanford Stadium, on the university campus, came first in 1921, was constructed in a few months for $211,000—less time and money than it might take to add a bedroom to a Palo Alto house today. The Rose Bowl followed in 1922, and L.A.’s Coliseum, a memorial to World War I veterans, opened in 1923. All three still stand.

They also still represent the egalitarian ideals, if not the uglier realities, of their time. All three stadiums were big, simple bowls that had among the largest capacities of any venues in the world, each squeezing 85,000-plus members of California’s rapidly growing population into cheap seats. These ambitious arenas were meant to serve the state’s surging higher education sector and sports-oriented college culture, hosting large graduations and football games. But they also became essential settings for major civic events. Herbert Hoover accepted the Republican party’s presidential nomination at Stanford Stadium in 1928, and John F. Kennedy would do the same for the Democrats at the L.A. Coliseum in 1960.

Unlike today’s tall and majestic pro stadiums, these modest, low-slung, one-level buildings connect to their environments. Stanford Stadium is on a sprawling, farm-like campus. The L.A. Coliseum is in Exposition Park, a former agricultural fairground that is also home to museums. And the Rose Bowl is famous for its garden-like setting, framed by Pasadena hills and the San Gabriel Mountains—visible from the stands—and a public recreation area for golf, biking, jogging, and soccer.

All three remain vital venues, with the Coliseum preparing to host its third Olympics in 2028. They have had 21^st century makeovers (Stanford Stadium’s was a demolition and a full reconstruction) that reduced seating capacity and provide more separate space for media and the wealthiest fans. Still, they are all too historic, too charming, and too accommodating of average fans for today’s pro sports franchises, which prefer stadiums full of corporate suits and premium suites that generate maximum revenue. Which is why the Coliseum hosted its second and final Super Bowl in 1973, Stanford held just one Super Bowl in 1985, and the Rose Bowl, home to five such games, hasn’t had once since 1993.

For one generation, the National Football League turned to San Diego, and its 1967 stadium, known as San Diego Stadium, Jack Murphy Stadium, and by other corporate names. It was taller and more flexible (baseball’s Padres played there) than the old bowls, but, despite a lovely setting in Mission Valley, could feel bland, like America’s post-war consensus.

It hosted Super Bowls in 1988, 1998, and 2003—then came under criticism from the National Football League and the local team, the San Diego Chargers, for being outdated. The Chargers threatened to leave if it wasn’t replaced with a newer, fancier facility. When San Diegans refused, wisely, to subsidize stadium construction, the Chargers moved to L.A. to share the new SoFi Stadium with the Rams.

In 2020, San Diego sold San Diego State University the place, which was demolished last year and will be replaced with a multibillion, multi-purpose development that includes housing, hotels, offices, retail, parks, and a smaller stadium.

In our era and the years to come, California Super Bowls belong to two new architecture-award-winning, high-tech, screen-filled stadiums. Neither is in our biggest cities, because L.A., San Francisco, San Diego, and Oakland don’t need to waste billions on pro sports franchises to draw economic activity.

Both stadiums are in smaller cities—Santa Clara and Inglewood—that are desperate to attract attention and development in their large metro regions. Both cities have approved huge and expensive sports venues that lack intimacy and often disappoint, not unlike California itself.

Both are troubled facilities. In Santa Clara, Levi’s Stadium was built in 2014 and hosted the Super Bowl in 2016, but it has been dogged by complaints about traffic, parking, and a design that leaves fans baking in the Silicon Valley sun. The 49ers have engaged in bitter legal and political fights with the city over terms of their deal, and some local leaders have expressed regret for seeking to host the facility in the first place.

In Inglewood, SoFi Stadium, like so many California mega-projects, was dogged by construction delays, questions about local subsidies, and cost overruns that doubled the price from $2.5 billion to $5 billion. The facility opened in fall 2020 and was supposed to have hosted the 2021 Super Bowl, but was deemed not ready. When I attended a game last year, I confronted hours-long traffic and $80 parking.

SoFi is so over-the-top that it can feel like parody. It has an expensive, technologically advanced roof that’s also unnecessary in a Southern California with so little rain. Its giant entrance and gathering spaces feel overly large, as if the authoritarian regime that built them were trying to awe you into submission.

And, despite openings on its sides, the stadium doesn’t really connect you to its local surroundings. SoFi is the opposite of those century-old open bowls. The stadium is its own world, walled off from the rest of us—from your seat, you can only see pieces of the entertainment district being built around it. Reinforcing this impression of separation is the fact that SoFi does not have a stop on L.A.’s rapidly expanding Metro rail system.

That’s why you won’t find me anywhere near Inglewood on Super Bowl Sunday. I’ll enjoy watching the game on TV with vaccinated friends. But what I’m really looking forward to is riding my bike around the Rose Bowl that morning.

The post A History of California in Six Super Bowl Stadiums appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Your columnist is a devout follower of state public health officials and their guidance. I wear two masks in public settings and get tested regularly, even after having had all three of my COVID vaccine shots.

Yet I’m struggling to take California’s latest public health directives seriously—especially the reminder to keep gatherings small and avoid large events. That’s because it’s not clear that state and local officials are serious about what they’re saying.

I can witness their lack of seriousness firsthand in my own hometown of Pasadena.

As the state and Los Angeles County announced a new indoor mask mandate and other updated COVID-safety recommendations in recent weeks, tickets were going on sale for the January 1 Rose Bowl between football teams from the University of Utah and the Ohio State University. Already, Utahans, whose university has never before qualified for the “granddaddy” of bowl games, are descending upon us.

So, it’s likely that 90,000 fans who have traveled from two states with even lower vaccination rates than California’s will cram into a small and historic stadium in the midst of an enormous winter surge of the Delta and Omicron variants. That same day, hundreds of thousands of people more are planning to line Colorado Boulevard to watch the world’s greatest floral parade.

“Our collective actions can save lives this holiday season,” says State Public Health Officer Tomás J. Aragón’s statement reinstating the indoor mask mandate. If officials truly want to save lives, wouldn’t they cancel this exhibition football game? Or, at least, wouldn’t we be seeing a reduction in the number of tickets sold, and the number of people allowed to attend?

And wouldn’t I be hearing, from my many friends at the Tournament of Roses, about plans to enforce physical distancing along the five-and-a-half-mile parade route?

Or to put my question more directly, to Gov. Newsom, who has extended his own emergency powers through March 31: Why should anyone take seriously your mandates and emergency declarations while you allow major sports and entertainment events in California to go on before packed crowds?

Now let me be clear: I’m not advocating for a return to the lockdowns that destroyed businesses, crippled schools, and touched off a society-wide crisis of isolation and mental health. We need to keep the essential institutions of California, our communities, and our economies open.

But the Rose Bowl—while it may be the most entertaining college football game of the year, and a favorite event of your columnist—is not essential. Yes, it can bring a lot of money to our hard-hit tourist industry, to other local businesses, to universities that play in the game, and to the media that broadcast it. But, in this context, it’s a significant risk, even if masking and vaccine rules are carefully enforced (which seems unlikely). In fact, if it were to become a super spreader event or a contributing factor in rising post-holiday case numbers, it might even jeopardize our returns to schools and workplaces after the holidays.

It’s hard for a Pasadena boy to say this, but holding the Rose Bowl in this time and place appears irresponsible.

So, too, is holding the Super Bowl, scheduled to be played in Inglewood, another Los Angeles County city, on February 13. Indeed, the case against the Rose Bowl, a fully outdoor venue, is weaker than that against the Super Bowl, which takes place at SoFi Stadium, which has open sides but a canopy-like roof.

If this emergency continues into the first several weeks of the new year, the Super Bowl needs to be called off or postponed—or at least held without a capacity crowd in the audience. I don’t make this suggestion with any satisfaction. Inglewood and its businesses have invested heavily on their town becoming an international leader in putting on mega-events, and this game is an early test. But if the recent guidance is serious, then the Super Bowl needs to be less super-sized this year.

At this point in the column, I am tempted to suggest ditching the Grammys, set for January 31, and the Oscars, scheduled for March 27, four days before the governor’s emergency order is expected to conclude. But very few people care about these award shows anymore.

Which brings me to the larger problem: that these massive high-profile events make a mockery of public health directives, and those of who follow them. Watching crowds gather fuels cynicism, conspiracy theories, and dangerous social divides. Why do the rich and powerful get to keep having their parties and bowl games, while your office or church feels pressure to call theirs off?

It’s become common for officials and elites to dismiss criticism by blaming the actions of everyday people for the continuing pandemic. My unvaccinated, unmasked neighbors richly deserve our scorn, which renders the tactic effective.

But blame has become a substitute for leadership, clarity, and consistency. Newsom and other authorities won’t say what would have to happen for the state-declared emergency to end. There’s been no discernible shift in strategy among California governments to account for the fact that the coronavirus seems likely to become endemic, a part of life, like the cold or flu. State and local officials, and their media acolytes, defend their lack of clear explanations by citing the virus’ unpredictability.

Meanwhile, they trot out an endless loop of mixed messages. Get vaccinated for your protection—but a vaccine is really not enough protection, so reconsider your holiday plans. And please avoid large gatherings—and root on the Rams and the Chargers all the way to the Super Bowl, right here in their home stadium.

These contradictions add to the widespread, desperate feeling that we’re living in a pandemic purgatory where no one is in charge. You might even say it’s like a college football game in which our team is getting annihilated (800,000 American deaths and counting) and the clock keeps ticking.

In recent weeks, my faith in public health, and my resolve to stay safe, have been shaken. I’ve been thinking of calling up a buddy who can hook me up with Rose Bowl tickets, so I can go to the game, and, in solidarity with my fellow Americans, roll the dice on whether I catch COVID. State and local public health officials don’t seem to mind.

Because if they weren’t playing games with our health, they’d call off the games, right?

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The power of sports fandom can at times seem irrational, especially to those who, blessed with an immunity to this potent virus, can utter those devastatingly inhumane words: “It’s just a game.” As the novelist Nick Hornby wrote in the opening of Fever Pitch, his wonderful memoir of growing up an Arsenal fan in England: “I fell in love with football as I was later to fall in love with women: suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it.”

Sitting in a Phoenix sports bar watching the Carolina Panthers utterly dismantle the Arizona Cardinals in the NFC Championship Game, I witnessed this pain of which Hornby spoke, and which I had felt in my core the previous week when the Denver Broncos knocked my Steelers out of the playoffs. The atmosphere in the bar went from celebratory to funereal over the span of two quarters. By the end, we were at a wake, talking in hushed tones, awkwardly reaching for some reassuring words of consolation for each other.

“Well, they had a good season” sounded a lot like the variants of that line you often hear at funerals: “He led such a full life.” At least no one said: “It’s only a game.”

So why the depth of passion among so many sports fans? Part of it, to be sure, is our appreciation and love for the sport being followed, and that sport’s central role in the sliver of our lives we can devote to leisure and entertainment. But I think that is only the tip of sports fandom’s iceberg.

The depth of our passion and commitment as sports fans comes from our sense of identity, how we connect to our past selves, and how we remain connected to the meaningful places in our lives, and to the people around us. Sports fandom, like religion, is fueled by nostalgia and a yearning for permanence in a world that is inherently impermanent.

Which is what makes the disappearance of Atlético Español so traumatic for me—the fatal version of the disruption alluded to by Hornby, alongside the pain. When I tune into Liga MX and see so many of the other teams Atlético used to play against still around, it’s as if I’ve been edited out of a picture I thought I was in, as if the moorings tying me to my childhood in Mexico have been irreversibly cut.

Back in America’s version of football, many people are stunned that, after a deluge of scandals in the last couple of years (brain injuries, star players involved in off-field crimes, allegations of cheating, franchise owners eager to bilk cities for sweetheart stadium deals), the NFL’s ratings continue to spike. Ratings for this past regular season and playoffs are up from a year ago, at a time when audiences for almost everything else keep fragmenting.

When NBC launched Sunday Night Football in 2006, the telecast ranked ninth in primetime ratings for the season. Ever since 2011, Sunday Night Football has been the undisputed primetime leader. A remarkable 14 of the 15 most watched TV shows last fall were football games, and the six highest-rated broadcasts of all times are Super Bowls (the M.A.S.H. 1983 finale is clinging to the seventh spot).

The NFL has done a brilliant job of leveraging fans’ nostalgia and desire to remain identified with the places they’ve moved away from. Hence the need to keep franchises in places like Green Bay and Buffalo, even if many of their fans cheer them on in warmer climates, and for a business model that makes all franchises competitive.

Parity means most teams will have moments of glory, enough to deepen an entire generation’s engagement with their ancestral NFL tribe. But the league puts its long-term success at risk when it lets teams move around for short-term gain, as it recently did when it allowed the Rams to leave St. Louis for Los Angeles.

We live in an age when we share fewer narrative threads in common, and when fewer narrative threads endure throughout our lives. Holidays help, including the upcoming observance of Super Bowl 50. I remember my mother in her later years turning on the NFL on Sundays to have games on in the background, because she liked to hear “the sounds of fall,” or because it connected her to her son if the Steelers were playing, or to her beloved Boston if it was the Patriots.

The Star Wars cultural phenomenon springs from a similar nostalgia and yearning for recurring shared narratives in an age of impermanence. Its fandom feels sports-like. I took my 11 year-old son to see The Force Awakens on opening weekend, with a lump in my throat at the realization that he is the exact age I was back when the first (or fourth, if you insist) Star Wars came out. Naysayers who complained that the plot of the new film too closely mimics the original Star Wars completely miss the franchise’s appeal. I don’t begrudge successful Steeler seasons because I have seen them before; I thrill at quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and wide receiver Antonio Brown following in the footsteps of Steeler greats Terry Bradshaw and Lynn Swann. And so it is with Rey’s journey echoing Luke Skywalker’s.

We all yearn to tap into these stories and memories that have defined us. As the Red Sox-obsessed protagonist in the Hollywood adaptation of Fever Pitch, played by Jimmy Fallon, asks his less-devoted-to-Fenway girlfriend:

Do you still care about anything you cared about years ago?

The post Why We Let Sports Teams Break Our Hearts appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Why Glendale? Serendipity. My relatives were realtors and found a house in Glendale that met our specifications. Glendale was a small, comfortable town. Our children, all under 10 years of age, walked a quarter mile to school. They played in the municipal park and swam in the municipal pool. There was little traffic, and getting to work or shopping in Phoenix took 10 minutes, tops. What is today the upscale area of Arrowhead was then a desert where we took the kids to ride motorbikes and to shoot BB guns. On a spring evening, the air was heavy with the scent of citrus blossoms from local groves.

Fans who attend the Super Bowl will encounter an entirely different city, a place that, as much as any other American municipality, has bet its future on making itself into a playground for professional sports. If some locals look less than happy about the plan, know that it’s the risks involved in that gamble, not the traffic, that’s bothering us.

Glendale has undergone dramatic change. At its incorporation in 1912, it was a Russian-Asian-Hispanic farming community. In the 1960s, when my family moved here, Glendale was a small city with a population of 45,000 covering just 12 of its present 52 square miles. Then, in the 1990s, new subdivisions, including Arrowhead, and new shopping, including Arrowhead Mall, grew up. Downtown reinvented itself as an antique mecca. With my children graduated from college and scattered to build their own families, Glendale adopted a district system of political representation rather than the at-large system that perpetually placed the “good ole boys” from downtown in positions of power. At the urging of friends, I ran for the city council and won a seat, serving from 1992 to 1996.

But Glendale wanted more than to be just another Phoenix suburb with the same chain stores. We were determined to carve our own distinct, national identity. In the early 2000s, as I returned to the council, our attention turned to the possibilities of sports as a catalyst. A strategy took shape: if we built major sports venues, the resulting tourism and sales tax dollars would strengthen city coffers and allow us to make major improvements in the quality of life of our residents. Build it and they will come, so to speak – especially sports fans and tourists.

First, a city-owned venue for professional hockey and for entertainment, the Gila River Arena (formerly known as Jobing.com Arena), and a complementary retail complex, Westgate, were built in partnership with developer Steve Ellman. Then, via another partnership with the Arizona Sports and Tourism Authority, we created two more sports facilities: the county-owned University of Phoenix football stadium (home to the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals) and a city-owned spring training baseball facility called Camelback Ranch (home-away-from-home to the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox). The football stadium put Glendale in the Super Bowl business for the first time; promised windfalls from hosting the big game were supposed to afford us the option of paying off construction debt related to the hockey arena and the baseball facility sooner.

Glendale became the NFL Arizona Cardinals’ home field. At the time of approval of the three new Glendale sports venues, our economy was robust. We saw no hint of the dramatic national recession to come. We learned to manage the crowds of people who descended upon our community for games; the effect is felt only by those who live in close proximity to the stadium, as I do. I cope by not shopping or driving near the stadium on game days, and the city, at my insistence, discouraged fan parking in adjacent neighborhoods. And 350 days a year, when there is no football, Glendale remains very much itself.

The bigger downside proved to be financial. It wasn’t long before optimistic staff projections of increased sales tax receipts and new economic development proved to be wrong. Then came the national recession. As we hosted our first Super Bowl in 2008 – next week’s will be our second–Glendale was in trouble. Nevertheless, expectations were high–a major selling point for building these sports facilities had been that the international publicity of a big Super Bowl game would put Glendale on the map, accelerating business relocations to our city and bringing new development. Those expectations weren’t met. To this day not one company has relocated to Glendale as a direct result of the Super Bowl. New retail development has located as close as possible to our freeway, not the stadium.

Pulling off that Super Bowl in 2008 was an all-hands on deck effort, with all city departments involved in the planning, preparation, and execution of Glendale’s moment in the spotlight. The city spent $3.4 million on the event and recouped a little over $1.2 million in sales tax and fees.

The resulting $2.2 million loss, combined with a national recession, was just one sign that our sports strategy was unsustainable. Debt related to the two sports venues that Glendale itself owned–the hockey arena and the ballpark–had once seemed manageable but soon proved to be a financial albatross. Glendale was bleeding. The regular season football games proved to be a wash financially. While sales tax revenues from Westgate are greater on game days the additional revenue is consumed by increased public safety and transportation costs to manage traffic and safety issues.

Other Super Bowl host cities, Miami Gardens in Florida and the Arlington area in Texas, have mechanisms for state reimbursement of their hosting costs, but we don’t. In recent years, Glendale’s mayor has concluded it doesn’t seem prudent to be in the Super Bowl hosting business if there is no way to recover its costs.

So why is the Super Bowl in Glendale again? The Super Bowl bid process is a long one, and locations are approved many years before the actual event. Tremendous political pressure was placed on the city from the Bidwill family, owners of the Arizona Cardinals, as well as other stakeholders, swaying a majority of the council to approve the bid in 2011. I was not in the majority. Glendale held out hope for a bill introduced in the Arizona state legislature in 2014 that promised to reimburse the city for its $2 million in game-related public safety costs. We got the Super Bowl but not the legislation. Glendale expects to reintroduce the bill this year in hopes of a different outcome.

There are some good things about the Super Bowl. Even though Glendale loses money, the state, the county and the Phoenix Metropolitan area will share in the injection into the economy of a projected $500 million dollars. Direct TV is hosting a major music festival in Glendale across the street from the stadium. The city has scheduled one of its premier events, the Chocolate Affaire, the weekend of the Super Bowl. The confluence of chocolate lovers and football fans will generate revenue for Glendale’s merchants and restaurants.

Costs to host this year’s Super Bowl have gone up since 2008. The city’s loss for this game is sure to be greater than the $2.2 million dollars loss the first time. Despite some additional development during the economic recovery, there are still not enough amenities surrounding the stadium to generate the sales tax needed to cover the hosting costs.

We love Glendale and so will this year’s Super Bowl visitors. Even as our population has grown to nearly 250,000 (we’re the nation’s 87th largest city and Arizona’s fifth largest), the city still retains a hometown feel. My family isn’t going anywhere–we are “nesters” and once we plant ourselves we stay planted. I invested 16 years as a councilmember helping to shape Glendale’s present and future. I choose not to walk away from my investment. So we’ve scrubbed our faces, slicked back our hair and picked up the living room. We are ready to welcome you to our home.

But the lack of financial relief has led many of us to believe that this should be Glendale’s last Super Bowl.

The post Why My Hometown Regrets Hosting the Super Bowl appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.