The Coliseum begins the process to revert back to a football field following the baseball exhibition two weeks ago
By Ben Malcolmson
USCRipsIt
PeteCarroll.com
Ten days to go before the Trojan Huddle, and the Coliseum field looks more like Dodger Stadium than USC’s home turf.
Thanks to the Dodgers-Red Sox exhibition game at the Coliseum on March 29, the field transitioned from football/soccer to baseball, and now it’s in the process of reverting back to its original state. The net in left field has been taken down, home plate and the rubber have been removed and the foul lines have been washed out.
But only time will tell what the Coliseum field will look like come April 19 at 11 a.m., when USC will host the Trojan Huddle, its annual end-of-spring scrimmage.
“It’ll be like my old Candlestick days,” Coach Pete Carroll joked, referring to his time as defensive coordinator for the San Francisco 49ers, who shared a stadium with the San Francisco Giants. “But we’ll make it work.”
There are several current workable options to accommodate the Trojan Huddle on April 19. The team could hold the intrasquad scrimmage on a fraction of the Coliseum field, playing on the roughly 60 yards of untouched grass on the peristyle end of the stadium. Or, the stadium’s grounds crew could place sod down on top of the dirt, but that would be last-minute and very doubtful, director of football operations Dennis Slutak said.
Or, the most likely plan is to draw the football field lines over the dirt infield and play on a normal 100-yard field.
“It might be like Jack Murphy Stadium or Dolphin Stadium,” Slutak said, referring to the football fields that have a baseball diamond over part of them.
At least the Trojans will be playing in the Coliseum on April 19. Because of the baseball configuration, there had been talk of moving the scrimmage to another location, but Carroll and athletic administrators eventually decided to stay with their home stadium — no matter what the field looked like.
“We just wanted to play at our home,” Carroll said. “The Trojan Huddle at the Coliseum — it’s going to be a great day of football.”
Here are some pictures of the present condition of the Coliseum, taken today:
Workers have laid down boards along the edge of the field so trucks can make their way to the east end of the field, where the bleachers are being reinstalled.
A view from the end zone.
Workers begin reinstall the end zone bleachers on the peristyle end of the Coliseum.
Though a baseball diamond takes up a portion of the field, much of the turf remains unblemished.
The football field lines can be faintly seen through the baseball field.
The view from the Coliseum tunnel looks different than usual — and different than what it’ll look like for the Trojan Huddle in 10 days.
• Ben Malcolmson is the Director of Online Media for USCRipsIt/PeteCarroll.com. You can contact him at Ben@PeteCarroll.com.
