The last real Rose Bowl

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ZoWie
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The last real Rose Bowl

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Actually the classic Rose Bowl, pitting the winners of the Big 10 and Pac-8, oops I mean 10, oops I mean 12, oops I mean whatever, has been dead for a few years. Nowadays, to win either conference is often enough to get into the BCS and out of Pasadena. Now, however, it's finally over for all time. The Rose Bowl can be given Last Rites. A game with the same name survives, but as a shell of its former self, and kind of a joke, really.

The Rose Bowl is in fact no longer the Granddaddy Of Them All. That's not an opinion, it's a fait accompli. Grandpa died yesterday. The story is overshadowed by the Monday Night Football tragedy, but in that one, Damar Hamlin is critical but not grave as I write this. However that's the NFL which doesn't seem to be what it used to be either. We're talking about college ball. The Rose Bowl is dead.

Yes, we lost the patient. Sometimes you don't get a good outcome. To be clear, what happened is that from now on, the Rose Bowl is just another BCS, with the matchup and even the date and time subject to the course of the playoffs, the whims of big-bucks sponsors, and not even necessarily on New Year's any more. It's become part of the machine. It used to be bigger than that.

I'm just glad that I went to UCLA the year they beat the shit out of USC and played #1 Ohio State in a real Granddaddy on New Year's Day with the whole planet watching, and we beat them too. Frankly, it's been all downhill since. The SEC rules now, largely through a lucky confluence of geography and prime TV game times. The BCS has become NFL Playoffs Lite, also subject to the whims of the great god TV, and college football is dead to me.
Last edited by ZoWie on Tue Jan 03, 2023 1:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"We must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation." --Liz Cheney, Republican, 7/21/22
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Number6
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Re: The last real Rose Bowl

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ZoWie wrote: Tue Jan 03, 2023 12:37 pm Actually the classic Rose Bowl, pitting the winners of the Big 10 and Pac-8, oops I mean 10, oops I mean 12, oops I mean whatever, has been dead for a few years. Nowadays, to win either conference is often enough to get into the BCS and out of Pasadena. College football, in its search to have a "real" champion like the NFL, has killed the Rose Bowl as we knew it.

The Rose Bowl is in fact no longer the Granddaddy Of Them All. That's not an opinion, it's a fait accompli. Grandpa died yesterday. The story is overshadowed by the Monday Night Football tragedy, but in that one, Damar Hamlin is critical but not grave as I write this. However that's the NFL which doesn't seem to be what it used to be either. We're talking about college ball. The Rose Bowl is dead.

Yes, we lost the patient. Sometimes you don't get a good outcome. To be clear, what happened is that from now on, the Rose Bowl is just another BCS, with the matchup and even the date and time subject to the course of the playoffs, the whims of big-bucks sponsors, and not even necessarily on New Year's any more. It's become part of the machine. It used to be bigger than that.

I'm just glad that I went to UCLA the year they beat the shit out of USC and played #1 Ohio State in a real Granddaddy on New Year's Day with the whole planet watching, and we beat them too. Frankly, it's been all downhill since. The SEC rules now, largely through a lucky confluence of geography and prime TV game times. The BCS has become NFL Playoffs Lite, also subject to the whims of the great god TV, and college football is dead to me.
The Rose Bowl has always been over-hyped and in reality it's just another football game. Let's not forget the purpose of the Rose Bowl and every other bowl game isn't to see which team is best but it is a money maker for its sponsors as well as the local economy.
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ZoWie
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Re: The last real Rose Bowl

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Originally it was a chariot race, not a football game. The Tournament of Roses started as a parade and then afterwards they had chariot races, ostrich races, etc, and eventually a football game. In its heyday, which is long gone, the Big 10 - Pac-12 contract was guaranteed to attract at least one and often two legitimate national championship contenders.

That's been gone for at least a decade now, but it wasn't until yesterday that they played the last real Rose Bowl. Sports writers have been all over this, though it got pushed out of the spotlight by the Monday Night Football disaster.

The current surviving Rose Bowl is just another TV show. It's not the same. Frankly, I don't see the parade as we know it surviving much longer either. It most likely jumped the shark this year when it started including hokey production numbers a la the staged telecast of the Macy's parade, where they don't really show the parade. I get a grim foreboding that it's going to be all downhill from here.

I've been in Manhattan and watched them blow up the balloons on the West Side, and there's still a real parade there, but you don't get that from the TV coverage. TV, like white phosphorus, kills all it touches. The Rose Bowl is only this week's victim. It would strongly appear that time's up for the annual Pasadena real estate promotion called the Tournament of Roses. A TV show survives, but it's not what it used to be.

I get it that other people have other things to get all in a funk about. It's an LA thing. It's one more reason LA is no longer the place I grew up in. Might as well move to New York and be done with it.
"We must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation." --Liz Cheney, Republican, 7/21/22
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ZoWie
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Re: The last real Rose Bowl

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The Rose Bowl has always been over-hyped and in reality it's just another football game. Let's not forget the purpose of the Rose Bowl and every other bowl game isn't to see which team is best but it is a money maker for its sponsors as well as the local economy.
That's true for any sports event. I have to agree that the Rose Bowl has been overhyped for the past couple of decades. Before that, it served as something of a playoff between the winners of the Pac-8 (at the time) and the Big 10 conferences, which at the time were the two major college football leagues. Sorry, SEC fans, but they were. You guys get all the players now because of the guaranteed TV exposure, which is caused by the eastern US being in a favorable time zone for nationwide audiences. West coast games are on at an unfavorable hour in the east.

Actually the Rose Bowl probably brings more tourists to LA right now than it did back when U$C was in it half the time and often more than that. UCLA can't seem to find a decent coach, and to compound the problem they and U$C are moving to the Big 10 which is a much tougher conference to win. UCLA will probably never be in it again, especially since it's now just another BCS playoff at a time and date TBD. Ironically, the Bruins now play their regular season home games in the same stadium. They finally fled U$C's back yard for Pasadena, which helped their alumni support, at least until they became unable to find a decent coach. It's a much nicer place to watch a game, and it helped attendance.

(There will never be an on-campus UCLA football stadium. The land in Brentwood or Bel-Air would cost more than the exploration of Mars.)

In general, college sports are not what they used to be in LA. Fortunately the pro sports are good, though this year the Rams and Lakers both suck and the Dodgers of course did the biggest choke job in recent baseball history.
"We must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation." --Liz Cheney, Republican, 7/21/22
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