ROME — Football fans were shocked on Saturday when this year’s “Battle for LA” did not take place in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, but rather in the Actual Historical Coliseum™ in Rome. “I thought it was weird that I needed to take a 12-hour flight to get to South Central, but I just figured it was the usual LA traffic,” noted freshman quarterback Dantius Maximus, sporting a toga instead of his usual blue and gold uniform. Unfortunately, what started out as players just constantly thinking about the Roman empire turned into them living it as they were given various blades and bludgeoning instruments and told to murder each other or be fed to beasts. Maximus, whose game stats included 3 kills, 4 maimings, and a nasty stab wound on his hand, led the Bruins to a commanding victory over the Trojans, which ended in a final score of 28-7 (a tally of how many living players each team had left). At press time, Emperor Geneous Blocaesar awarded surviving players with electric chariots to ride around campus, while Gladiatorial Coach Chipanus Kelinaus was exiled to Iberia with his buyout of 8,000,000 Denarii in tow.