By GREG BEACHAM
AP Sports Writer
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) --Dozens of fans brawled in a Rose Bowl parking
lot before the Southern California-UCLA football game Saturday, leaving
two men stabbed, two police officers with minor injuries and three men
arrested, authorities said.
About 40 fans
of both schools fought at about 4:20 p.m. in a grassy part of Brookside
Golf Course that the stadium uses for event parking, Pasadena police
Cmdr. Darryl Qualls said.
One person was
stabbed in the cheek and the other was stabbed in the back during the
melee some three hours before the crosstown-rivalry game between the
Bruins and Trojans was set to start, Qualls said. Both were taken by
ambulance to Huntington Memorial Hospital. He described their condition
as stable.
One officer was treated for a sprained hand, the other for a sprained ankle, and both were released, Qualls said.
Arturo Cisneros, 44, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder,
police said. Steven Radu, 27, and Joshua Elder, 23, were arrested for
investigation of assault on a police officer. They were being held in
Pasadena City Jail.
Police did not know if any of the men had retained attorneys.
The names of the victims were not released.
USC later beat the Bruins for the 11th time in 12 games, 28-14.
It was not immediately clear what sparked the brawl, but police said
the school rivalry and tailgate party drinking were major factors.
"The fans are pretty passionate about their football teams," Qualls said.
USC fan Michael Lane of Los Angeles said he was tailgating with friends in the lot when the melee broke out around him.
"People from USC and UCLA were fighting against each other," Lane
said. "It was bottles being thrown and different things happened ... I
saw a person come out with a bloody face."
Qualls said that the last time the annual rivalry game was held at the
Rose Bowl in 2008, there were about 50 arrests, but he didn't think any
of them were for assault.
"It doesn't happen at normal college football games," he said.
The brawl occurred before most fans or either team had arrived at the
Rose Bowl, but thousands of tailgating fans spent most of the day
gathered around RVs or barbecues in quiet Arroyo Seco, waiting for the
late kickoff dictated by television coverage.
UCLA's rivalry with USC is among the most intense in college
football, pitting two schools separated by just 13 miles between USC's
downtown campus and UCLA's Westwood address. The rivalry divides fans
from every section of Los Angeles, sometimes even splitting families.
UCLA was overshadowed while the Trojans won seven straight Pac-10 titles during the past decade.
Saturday's USC victory -- the Trojan's fourth straight -- in the 80th
meeting between the teams was for nothing but civic pride, with the
Bruins failing to qualify for a bowl game and USC banned from the
postseason by NCAA sanctions.
------
Associated Press writer Andrew Dalton in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Barkley passed for 198 yards and Malcolm Smith returned a fumble 68
yards for a touchdown for the Trojans (8-5, 5-4 Pac-10), who beat their
crosstown rivals for the 11th time in 12 meetings, including four
straight.
