The Year of Jim: Kicked Out

I'm going a little out of order here in my blog posts. I still have to post about Target Field, but this is a quick and easy one. I got to Los Angeles on Saturday morning. Pete, Katie, and I were going to the Angel game that night. So we had time to something during the day. I have a list of a few southern California things that I haven't done yet that I'd like to do. There's Disneyland, but we didn't have enough time to make it worth doing on Saturday. I really want to do a Rose Bowl tour, but apparently they're only offered on the last Friday of the month. What we did have time for was a Los Angeles Coliseum tour. I had googled that before and it seemed that they weren't available. But I googled it again and it seems that they just started doing tours this year. So Pete picked me up from the airport and we went to the Coliseum.

The Los Angeles Coliseum was used in the 1932 and 1984 Olympics. It has been the home of USC football since 1923. It was the site of Notre Dame's victory on November 24, 2012, one of the greatest days of my life (also my favorite game that I didn't go to). We were ranked number 1 for the first time in my time as a fan and a win would put us in the National Championship Game. Behind Manti Te'o, Theo Riddick, Louis Nix, KeiVarae Russell, and Kyle Brindza (some bad coaching by Laney didn't hurt either), Notre Dame won 22-13. I still remember exactly how I reacted when USC's pass on fourth and goal fell incomplete late in the fourth quarter (going for it made no sense since they were down nine). I yelled "No! Yes!" No because the pass was not complete. And yes because it was awesome. Unfortunately, the National Championship Game was not fun. Notre Dame also won three other games when ranked number 1 there (1947, 1966, and 1988). In those three years, Notre Dame did go on to win the National Championship. In 1947, it was 38-7 (and USC was ranked 3). In 1966, it was 51-0 (USC was ranked 10). And in 1988, in a battle of unbeatens, number 1 Notre Dame defeated number 2 USC by a score of 27-10. Notre Dame has lost twice there when ranked number 1. The 1938 team lost 13-0 (it was not coached by one of Notre Dame's legends). And in 1964, Notre Dame was robbed of a National Championship by some terrible officiating in Ara Parseghian's first season 20-17 (as detailed in Jim Dent's book Resurrection: The Miracle Season That Saved Notre Dame). I've said before that USC is Notre Dame's one true rival. Yes, there are other rivalries, but they're not Notre Dame-USC. I've heard USC described as our rival, Navy is our friend, and Michigan is our enemy. That's a good way of putting it. I have never been to Michigan Stadium and I have no desire to ever set foot in Ann Arbor. I wanted to go to Los Angeles Coliseum.

Outside the Los Angeles Coliseum

Anyway, the website said that they have tours from Tuesday to Saturday. There was also a link to buy tickets on Ticketmaster. But when I clicked on that link, they weren't listing any tours for the Saturday I was there. Pete and I figured that we could probably just walk up and buy tickets so we drove to the Coliseum and parked. It turns out that there were no tours because they were setting up for a beer and burger festival. But the gate was open and nobody stopped us from walking in. If you look at the picture above, you see those arches and the Olympic rings. We got on the other side of those arches and were able to look out at the field. There were plaques of people with Los Angeles connections. We saw most of those. Then a woman asked if we were with the festival. I really wanted to come up with some kind of lie that would let us stay a little longer, but I had nothing. So after about ten minutes of looking around, we got kicked out. Oh well. I didn't get a tour, but I did get to see the inside of the Coliseum and I can now say that I've been kicked out of the stadium of Notre Dame's rival. It wasn't a bad way to start my trip to Los Angeles.