Home is Where the Heart Is

Someone needs to talk some sense into the Coliseum commission. The Coliseum Commission has remained stubborn in their negotiations with everyone, including NFL executives and now even with their most loyal friend and partner, USC. USC has finally become so fed up with the Commission’s ineffectiveness and their decisions not to fix the aging stadium that they have threatened to move across town to the Rose Bowl. USC who is the only regular user of the Coliseum right now an is in large part the only entity holding the stadium up wants to sign a new lease, since the present expires after the USC versus UCLA football game this weekend. USC is willing to pay for the much needed renovations totaling somewhere around $100 million if the Coliseum is willing to give USC some of the revenue that will come to the Coliseum because of these upgrades. The Coliseum Commission however does not want to give USC control of part of the revenue that will come in. The Coliseum Commission does not have very many other options at this point with the risk of USC leaving. The Commission has already succeeded in driving out UCLA football, both the Rams and Raiders, as well as the Lakers, Clippers, and USC basketball from the Sports Arena which the Commission is also in charge of managing.


If USC follows through on its word and moves to the Rose Bowl after this season the Coliseum will quickly fall into irrelevance as this article from the LA Times explains. Right now the Coliseum stands as both an architectural and historical monument for Los Angeles. It has hosted two Olympics, hosted professional baseball, football, and soccer games, it has been visited by Popes and Presidents so to let this monument fade into obscurity is a terrible decision. The Coliseum has been a part of my life as well as every other USC student and I can not imagine USC football without the Coliseum. Also as this is the week that USC plays UCLA in football I do not like the idea of having to share a stadium with our biggest rival. Many others share this same concern which is shown in this article.


One positive step for keeping USC in the Coliseum is that Mayor Villaraigosa is on our side and has spoken up to try and keep USC at home. He has publicly said that an NFL franchise moving to the Coliseum will not happen. This is a big step in keeping USC in the coliseum since the Commission has no leverage in negotiating with USC now, because if they lose USC then the Coliseum will not have any way of generating revenue.


The Coliseum Commission is a group made of 3 county officials, 3 state officials, and 3 city officials. Each of these groups and members has their own agenda and political aspirations and has their own ideas on what the Coliseum needs to do. As Todd Dickey, who is USC’s senior vice president for administration has said “there is no such thing as the Coliseum Commission, they are nine politicians with their own agenda, so it’s virtually impossible to negotiate with this nine-headed hydra.” The Commission needs to take a step back and look at all that the Coliseum means to the people of Los Angeles, and look at the history that it has in the city. The Commission needs to come together and take this opportunity to renovate and make the Coliseum better so that it can stand for future generations of Los Angelinos, especially for us Trojans. Fight on.

How low can you go?

Southern California home prices have been on fierce decline for a few months now. All of Southern California has been affected by this market slump but many areas have been hit much harder. The areas that have been hit hardest are the areas that have a high percentage of first time buyers. These new homeowners have seen their homes that they had just purchased lose up to 30% of their value in a few short months. This is causing them to have no choice but to walk away from these homes. The areas that have not been hit hard are areas that have relatively low new homes being built, many of these areas have not seen any decline in value at all.

What many people are asking is how much lower the market will fall and for how long before it turns around. Many experts predict that the housing market in Southern California has a ways to drop before it stops falling. Five experts recently interviewed in a LA Times article seen here all said that the market will still fall between 10 and 25 percent. Most also agreed that the market will not stop falling until late 2009 and possibly even 2010.

Many people that are interested in buying new homes are excited to see home prices fall however since they feel they will be able to buy at a very low price. However because of this market slump, many mortgage rates will be set at higher rates which they will be paying for over the life of their mortgage. I think the market will begin to correct when people stop buying property to as investments but buy property that they plan on living in for an extended amount of time. Only time will tell just how serious this housing slump will be but hopefully it will correct itself before it leads to more damage in other sectors of the market.

Bad Newz

The Mike Vick case has been discussed in much detail in the past few months, much of the discussion concerned with what his punishment should be for the crimes that he helped commit. While he needs to be punished for what he did, more of the discussion now needs to turn to what it is about professional athletes that often causes them to feel they are above the law and can get away with nearly anything. The recent OJ Simpson event as well as the Pacman Jones situation shows other examples of how American culture places such a high importance on celebrities that makes many feel like they are untouchable.

In this week’s Sports Illustrated article, seen here there is a very good article that discusses what factors led Michael Vick to believe he could get away with all that he did. Vick is similar to many professional athletes, in that he came from a family that often did not have much money and grew up with limited options. When this occurs most athletes find it very hard to deal and handle their new success and popularity so they turn back to what is familiar to them which is where they came from and the friends they had before they became famous. Sometimes these friends from back home as in Michael Vicks case have questionable motives for staying in touch with their new famous friends. Many feel like it is their ticket out of the rough neighborhood so they tag along and live the celebrity life through their professional athlete friends. This can be seen in many examples ranging from, Ray Lewis, Jamal Lewis, and Robert Traylor. All these people circled themselves with people that were blinded by their friend’s wealth.

Professional athletes often feel obliged to help those that they grew up with. They feel they owe it their friends to share their newfound wealth, and their friends are more than happy to live the good life with money that is not theirs. There are some reasons why athletes feel they have to give their money to the people they knew from home. The first reason is that they feel indebted and sometimes guilty that they made it big and their friends did not. Many people growing up in low income areas turn to gangs and violence as a means for making money and getting respect, athletes sometimes get a “free pass” from this life because they have a chance to do something without turning to the streets. If they do make it big they often feel like they have a debt to pay to those that let them not join gangs. Another reason that athletes feel obliged to bring people up with them is that they knew these people growing up and went through tough times together. They feel like they would not have made it without these friendships. Successful people are always told not to forget where they came from. This creates a sense of communal pressure that their community places on those that have come from the area. The biggest factor that leads professional athletes to surround themselves with people that they are familiar with is that they are often forced to grow up at very young ages and they want to have a sense of security and they accomplish this by bringing old friends around. Sports teams and colleges begin scouting and following athletes sometimes when they are as young as 13 or 14 years old. People see that these people can become wealthy and begin to try and associate with these kids. This creates a very tough wall of trust that athletes erect in order to protect themselves from being taken advantage of. This sticks with them even after they make it to the pros and often times they remain very wary of anyone that they haven’t known for an extended period of time. Unfortunately even when people are genuinely trying to help athletes, many do not listen because they immediately believe that everyone is just there to take advantage of them.

With more and more athletes getting in trouble because of the people they associate with something needs to be done to try and change this trend. I think more attention needs to be paid to what these sports leagues can do to help these young people who are thrown into an unfamiliar world and left to make their own decisions based on limited knowledge. Sports leagues such as the NFL have programs established to try and help this but it is only for first year players, after that they are left on their own to wade through the constant pressure of being a celebrity in American culture.