Because it first opened in 1923, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum has been the only real residence of USC soccer. No main sports activities crew within the metropolis’s historical past has performed in the identical venue for longer.
However after greater than a century spent within the metropolis’s iconic stadium, The Instances has realized that the 2028 Summer time Olympics and Paralympic Video games will possible drive USC to discover a new residence for its soccer crew in 2028, with the likeliest choice being SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.
A number of folks with data of the state of affairs not approved to debate it publicly advised The Instances that the Coliseum wouldn’t be prepared for the beginning of faculty soccer season in September 2028 due to the $100-million non permanent monitor that’s being constructed on prime of the Coliseum area to host the track-and-field competitors on the L.A. Olympics and Paralympic Video games.
The logistics are nonetheless being labored out with L.A. 2028, and USC has not made a last choice about the place the Trojans’ 2028 soccer season will likely be performed. A supply stated the varsity hasn’t formally decided whether or not the Coliseum area could possibly be prepared later within the fall, maybe to host a portion of USC’s 2028 residence schedule. However even whether it is logistically potential, it’s not clear that USC’s athletic division would discover that association in its greatest curiosity, given it will imply uprooting the crew midseason or spending a protracted stretch of the 2028 slate away from L.A.
“USC and LA28 are working in lockstep on all logistics for the Olympic and Paralympic Video games,” USC athletics spokesperson Cody Worsham stated in an announcement. “We’ll share particulars with the general public when they’re finalized.”
SoFi Stadium officers declined to remark when requested about USC’s potential transfer to the venue in 2028.
With the closing ceremonies of the Paralympic Video games set for Aug. 27, 2028, there can be simply two weeks for the non permanent monitor to be eliminated and the grass area under to be restored forward of USC’s at the moment scheduled 2028 residence opener on Sept. 9. A number of folks advised The Instances that’s not a possible timeline for a construction LA28 chairman Casey Wasserman as soon as referred to as “the most costly and doubtless sophisticated factor we really need to construct” forward of the 2028 Video games.
This isn’t a brand new drawback at USC. Discussions concerning the plausibility of the soccer program sharing the Coliseum with the Olympics in 2028 hint again properly earlier than present athletic director Jennifer Cohen was employed in 2023. The idea at one level, in response to an individual accustomed to these discussions, was that with some intelligent scheduling, USC would solely need to miss a house recreation or two.
Now, in response to a number of folks accustomed to the state of affairs, USC is predicted to spend the 2028 season at SoFi Stadium, which hosts the NFL’s Rams and Chargers. By that time, it might even be the house area of the town’s different Huge Ten soccer crew.
UCLA has already said it plans to commerce the Rose Bowl, the place it has performed since 1982, for the fashionable SoFi Stadium, regardless of a lease settlement that runs by way of 2044. Town of Pasadena and the Rose Bowl Working Firm have since sued the varsity and SoFi Stadium’s possession in hopes of blocking the Bruins’ transfer.
If UCLA forges on with plans to desert the Rose Bowl in 2026 for SoFi, all 4 of the town’s main soccer groups could possibly be enjoying beneath the identical roof two years later.
These logistics, nevertheless, pale compared to what it’s going to take to host Olympic monitor and area on the Coliseum in 2028, in the identical stadium the place the competitors was held virtually a century earlier. The most important impediment LA28 confronted utilizing an iconic venue that hosted the 1984 Olympics is that there wasn’t sufficient room on the Coliseum flooring for an Olympic-sized monitor.
Renovations within the early Nineties added 14 rows of seats on the backside of the bowl, shrinking the dimensions of the Coliseum area. The answer requires set up of a monitor 11 ft above the sector that stretches over the primary few rows of stadium seating to met Olympic requirements.
To construct the non permanent monitor, the Coliseum’s turf and the filth beneath it will likely be scraped away, all the way down to the stadium’s concrete base the place columns will likely be positioned about each 10 ft. That building on the Coliseum is predicted to start instantly after the Trojans end their residence soccer schedule someday in November 2027.
Invoice Hanway, the manager vice chairman for AECOM — the infrastructure consulting agency employed to supervise LA28’s preparations — advised The Instances in June 2024 that the monitor was “an extremely complicated construct” in “an extremely tight house.”
Taking monitor down will likely be its personal problem, one that can take longer than the two-week window between the tip of the Video games and the start of USC’s 2028 slate. When an identical construction was constructed for the 2014 Commonwealth Video games in Glasgow, Scotland, the soccer crew that performed within the stadium — Queen’s Park FC — didn’t return for greater than a yr.
Except that timeline might be slashed, the Trojans will spend the 2028 season switching off Saturdays with their rivals, who, for one yr, can be across-the-hallway versus throughout city.
USC and UCLA shared the Coliseum for 54 years earlier than the Bruins moved to the Rose Bowl in 1982. For 33 of these years, the Coliseum additionally hosted the Rams on Sundays.
If that feels too crowded to USC, the Rose Bowl is the one different choice on the town — and all of a sudden appears to be in severe want of a tenant.
However as of now, in response to an individual accustomed to the state of affairs, SoFi Stadium is the one venue that’s been mentioned as a possible non permanent residence.
