If an NFL team wants to move to Southern California before the proposed stadium in Los Angeles is built, the City of Pasadena wants the league to know the Rose Bowl is available.
Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard and Rose Bowl General Manager Darryl Dunn both told Pasadena Weekly that they like the idea of hosting an NFL team.
“What is important now is that they get a team to move here,” Dunn said. “We are hopeful to be an interim venue for the new NFL team.”
Although the Rose Bowl has hosted five Super Bowls, no NFL team has ever played its home games there. Officials in Pasadena, which owns and operates the stadium, would like to change that.
“The idea of possibly accommodating the NFL for two or three years while the transition takes place is not something we should ignore,” said Bogaard. “We are making a huge investment in the Rose Bowl and we think the lease payments from the NFL would be substantial.”
There are a lot of hurdles the Rose Bowl would need to overcome, including renovations the NFL would likely want and getting the OK from UCLA, which is the stadium’s primary tenant and would have veto power over any new tenant. There’s also, of course, the little fact that there’s no NFL team ready to move to Los Angeles.
But once a team is ready, it could move to Southern California even before a stadium is built.
