A longtime USC booster and Los Angeles billboard magnate is taking the university to court, claiming the Trojans quietly wiped his name off the practice field he helped build.
Brian Kennedy, a prominent donor whose name once sat on the football practice field, has sued the University of Southern California after the school removed that recognition while building a new performance center. Kennedy’s complaint says USC promised to call the space Brian Kennedy Field “for the life of the field” and broke that deal when it replaced or reconfigured the site for the new facility. He is asking a court to enforce the naming promise and to award damages for what he describes as reputational harm, embarrassment and humiliation.
According to a complaint obtained by the Los Angeles Times, Kennedy gave $400,000 in 1998 to construct the field and later paid to install turf and an electronic scoreboard. The filing says his total giving to USC exceeds $4 million. It also alleges that the parties reached their agreement in April 1998, that an explicit “50 years” term was originally included, and that the duration language was removed before the final contract was signed. The complaint brings claims including promissory estoppel, fraud, breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, and negligent misrepresentation, and it seeks enforcement of USC’s promises along with appropriate relief.
The new Bloom Football Performance Center is a donor-funded, multi-story complex intended to house USC football operations and two full-length outdoor practice fields, part of an Athletics West fundraising push toward roughly $200 million. USC’s athletics site lists the center as scheduled to open in summer 2026, and Clark Construction’s project page outlines the scale and timeline for the build-out. According to project details from Clark Construction, the project includes a roughly 165,000-square-foot performance building and adjacent practice fields.
Kennedy, founder of Regency Outdoor Advertising, has been a conspicuous presence around Trojan athletics for decades and has publicly used his billboards to press causes such as the return of Reggie Bush’s Heisman Trophy, the Los Angeles Times reports. The complaint says Kennedy tried to negotiate with university officials for “a mutually acceptable means of preserving and honoring the recognition previously afforded” to him but ultimately decided the school’s offers were not “comparable.” It characterizes USC’s conduct as “willful, malicious, oppressive, fraudulent” and “despicable.”
Legal Claims and What’s at Stake
The case largely turns on how a court interprets “the life of the field” and whether the written agreement or the parties’ conduct created enforceable naming rights. Promissory estoppel requires proof of a clear promise and reasonable reliance, while the fraud and misrepresentation counts will depend on whether any representations by the university were false or misleading at the time they were made. Potential remedies could include a court order restoring or otherwise enforcing recognition, or money damages, but disputes like this are typically fact-intensive and hinge on drafting history, internal communications and other documentary evidence.
What Happens Next
Kennedy’s lawsuit was filed this week and now moves into the litigation phase, where motions, discovery and factual fights could take months to sort out. Timing matters here: USC is preparing to occupy the Bloom center in the coming weeks, and Kennedy argues that construction has already erased the visibility his name once enjoyed on the old field. Expect early skirmishes over procedural issues and document production before the case gets anywhere near a decision on the core naming-rights question.
