Home to the both the University of California-Los Angeles (once) and University of Southern California (still) football teams. Home to, at one time or another, four professional football teams. Home to the transplanted Brooklyn Dodgers while they waited for a stadium of their own to be built. And most notoriously, home to the games of both the X and XXIII Summer Olympiad.
In fact, everything about the L.A. Coliseum boasts of greatness. The largest crowds to ever watch a professional baseball game (93,103 to watch Dodgers vs. Yankees in 1959) or professional football game (100,470 for Rams vs. Bears in 1958) did so at the Coliseum. Built in 1921 (finished in '23) with a capacity of 76,000, the Coliseum was expanded to seat over 100, 000 for the Summer Olympics of 1932. The Olympic Cauldron Torch was added, lit not only in both Los Angeles games, but for every Olympics. The flame has also been lit in memoriam of President Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.
But above all, the Coliseum is synonymous with athletic achievement. In 1932, spectators watched Mildred Zaharias (better known as Babe Didrikson) leap into athletic and women's rights history with medals in the javelin, high jump, and 80m hurdles. Those present in 1984 witnessed the four-gold-medal birth of track legend Carl Lewis - a feat that had not been accomplished since Jesse Owens in 1936 - who won the 100m, 200m, 4x100m relay, and the long jump. Moroccan Nawal El Moutawakel became the first female Olympic champion from an Islamic nation (in the 400m hurdles) and twenty-seven different nations left the stadium with medals.
The L.A. Coliseum brought consistent crowds of over ninety thousand to watch the '59 Series between the Dodgers and the White Sox (which L.A. won in six). The very first Super Bowl (then known simply as the NFL-AFL Championship) between the dynastic Green Bay Packers and the high-powered Kansas City Chiefs was played in the Coliseum, beginning a sporting tradition that would become one of the most recognized in the world. It was home to Marcus Allen, both collegially and professionally. It was where two-sport sensation Bo Jackson became a football sensation. It's watched the magnificence of Mike Garrett, O.J. Simpson, Charles White, LenDale White, and Reggie Bush. It started the professional trajectory of Mark Carrier, Junior Seau, Willie McGinest, and Chris Claiborne. It's produced the legends of Rodney Peete, Carson Palmer, and Matt Leinert.
It is both simplistic and symbolic. It is a place where greatness is the rule, not the exception. It is a place that brings the best out of those who strive there.
