The Grand Old Bowl Tradition – Bunk! – Part 1
by Mike Felten
In the brief hiatus between the time the last conference championship was decided and the BCS computers did their work under cloak of cyber darkness, we sat and speculated on the way the match-ups would form.
The grand tradition of the Rose Bowl, the daddy-of-them-all, would seem to dictate the preferred slotting of the Big Ten representative and a Pac Ten team. Oregon was going to the national championship, but Stanford was ranked #4. It seemed to be a great game waiting for Wisconsin. That is what would be in keeping with the grand plan of the Pasadena game.
Stanford had played in the first game in 1902 and had more than earned the right. They had lost only to Oregon and some were suggesting that they were the hotter team at the end of the season,
#3 TCU was unbeaten and no slouch, but they are lacking in the tradition of the Rose. From 1922 until the advent of the BCS in 1998 the game always involved a Pacific Coast Conference team. From 1947 on, the Big Ten was always involved. The Rose Bowl still states that it desires “if possible, to maintain the traditional Pac-10-Big Ten format”. In 2002 Nebraska and Miami tossed tradition into the dumpster. Since then we have seen Texas (twice), Oklahoma and now TCU.
The Rose Bowl this year was trumped by a BCS rule that forced them to select a team from a “non-automatic qualifying” conference.
This most likely upsets the “white suiters” (the old guard Rose Bowl hospitality crew) who welcome you to the Rose Bowl and continue to give us a hint of the grand bowl tradition that the BCS has already discarded for us.
To be continued…
For more debunking of the myth that tradition is so important to the BCS, check out www.SportsFans.org tomorrow for Part 2 of Mike Felten’s commentary including details on the history of the Orange Bowl and the Cotton Bowl.
Mike Felten is an SFC sportswriter fellow. He is a music industry veteran, a performer, and owner of the Landfill Records, the former Record Emporium, navigating the transitioning areas of intellectual property and musicians rights. Born and raised in Chicago, Mike is a long time Chicago Cubs fan and a Oklahoma Sooners booster.
