So I might as well ‘fess up that I am not the least bit outraged. I am, in fact, overjoyed. And not just because the BCS money-grub appears to be self-destructing. No, I am thrilled because I am a sports traditionalist. I loved all those big New Year’s Day bowls that the BCS hijacked, transforming them into footnotes on the college football season. But now, in a strange twist of fate, the BCS computers are serving the very tradition they were destroying. By selecting Oklahoma and Louisiana State for its championship match-up while snubbing Southern Cal, the number one team in both the writers’ and coaches’ polls, those computers have given us fans back our beloved Rose Bowl.
When I was a youngster, the “granddaddy of all bowls” was my family’s New Year’s Day favorite. Orange, Sugar and Cotton were suitable appetizers, but Rose was always the main course. We were so devoted to the festivities out in Pasadena that we even kicked off the day by watching the Rose Bowl parade. Now that I am older with a little more life experience, I recognize that the parade was a bit bizarre. I could swear I remember hearing something like this: “And here comes the ‘Fall of Rome’ float. The gladiator’s sword is made from 300 yellow roses, the trickle of blood on its tip, red rose petals of course. And it required some 5,000 white roses to make that Roman senator’s toga worn by Orson Welles.”
What made the Rose Bowl special, though, was the rivalry that pervaded the game. It was a true War of the Roses. The Big 10 and Pac 10 weren’t just a couple of football conferences, but a pair of metaphors for old and new America. It was a conflict of both football and life styles. The Big 10, out of the heartland with its industrial, three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust offenses vs. California Dreamin’ with multi-colored uniforms and multi-faceted offenses.
My relationship with the Rose Bowl was cemented when I went to grad school at Stanford. A year after my arrival on the West Coast, Jim Plunkett quarterbacked Stanford to the Rose Bowl, where they were matched up against number one and undefeated Ohio State. It was no contest. The Buckeyes took the opening kickoff and marched relentlessly across midfield. But on a fourth and one, there was, quite shockingly, a cloud of dust, but no three yards. Not even one. On Stanford’s first play, they ran some kind of double reverse flea-flicker that put the ball on Ohio State’s one-yard line. The game was effectively over. Stanford would repeat the upset the following year, this time against Michigan.
This year, with top-ranked USC pitted against fourth-ranked Michigan, the Rose Bowl will certainly rival-and quite possibly upstage-the BCS championship at the Sugar Bowl three days later. A Pac 10 victory certainly won’t be an upset this year. Except of course to the BCS, which it will upset tremendously. Because my sports writing brethren, out of both deep integrity and heartfelt spite, will reward a USC victory with a national championship, regardless of what ensues on Jan. 4 between Oklahoma and LSU in the Big Easy.
The result, since the coaches will by rule follow the BCS dictum (and, of course, the big money), would then be a split national championship. Now that’s hardly a tragedy. But it is exactly what the BCS was invented to avoid. Which means it failed. Which is kind of sweet revenge. We’re hijacking the national championship and there’s nothing any computer can do about it.
