The modern-day sports stadium is something like an enormous outdoor (or indoor) living room. Roomy seats — even for those who can’t afford suites. Gourmet food. High-tech gadgetry. Video screens that are nearly the size of the field itself.
The Rose Bowl it isn’t.
This relic of a stadium, with its cramped seats, narrow tunnels, meh food and spotty connectivity speaks to just how old the Rose Bowl is — its 100-year birthday arrived in October. But what new stadiums have in modern conveniences, they rarely have in setting, often built where land is cheap and available — on parking lots, industrial plots or blighted neighborhoods.