Columnist Steve Guiremand: BCS isn’t coming up all Roses

Steve Guiremand

Thursday, Jan. 3, 2002 | 10:44 a.m.

Steve Guiremand covers college football for the Sun. Reach him at 259-2324 or steveg@lasvegassun.com. Regular columnist Ron Kantowski is taking the day off.

PASADENA, Calif. -- This is going to take a little getting used to.

Tonight marks the end of an era for the Granddaddy of them all, the Rose Bowl. For the first time since Jan. 1, 1947, the Rose Bowl will not pit the champions from the Big Ten Conference and the Pac-10 Conference, or the Pacific Coast Conference as it was known back in those days.

Instead, we get the made-for-big-TV-bucks Bowl Championship Series version of the national championship game in Pasadena between No. 1 Miami and fourth-rated Nebraska.

The BCS rotates the national title game each year between the four major bowls -- Rose, Orange, Sugar and Fiesta.

This is the first time, however, it has been held in Pasadena.

Having grown up in Southern California and either attended or covered more than a dozen Rose Bowls since the early '70s, it seems very odd to me that the Pac-10 and Big Ten won't be represented here tonight.

When I think of the Rose Bowl, I think of Woody Hayes bringing in a powerful Ohio State squad or Bo Schembechler coaching Michigan against John McKay or John Robinson at USC or Terry Donahue's UCLA Bruins. Heck, I even think of JoPa against Mike Bellotti. I don't think of Larry Coker vs. Frank Solich.

I expect to look down and see Traveler romping down the sidelines, not some Donald Duck wannabe named Sebastian the Ibis.

I expect to see a crowd that features a sea of cardinal and gold or maize and blue, not orange, white and green.

I expect to see teams coming onto the field with their bands playing fight songs such as "Hail to The Victors" or "Conquest," not running through disco smoke to the sound of a hurricane.

I expect to see fans dressed in Polo shirts and Dockers, not overalls.

I expect to see the game on the same afternoon as the Rose Parade, not two nights later.

I don't think I'm the only one who isn't exactly overwhelmed by the switch. Most of the sports segments on the local news broadcasts I've seen here lead with stories about Shaq's arthritic toe or Kobe's sore ribs and briefly touch on the Rose Bowl game at the finish. And Nebraska players were actually booed several times during a visit to a Lakers game last week.

The Rose Bowl had no choice but to end its tradition in the name of "progress." If the Pac-10 and Big Ten conferences had held out and not participated in the BCS, schools from the Big 12, SEC, ACC and Big East would have set up shop on the West Coast and in the Midwest and used the old, "You'll never get to play for a national championship" line on blue chip football recruits, many of whom were already starting to migrate south and east.

The irony here, of course, is a matchup between Pac-10 champ Oregon and Big Ten champ Illinois arguably would have been better than the national title game the Rose Bowl was stuck with. And Oregon still could end up with a piece of the national title.

Miami vs. Nebraska. Wouldn't that be a perfect matchup for the Orange Bowl?

Oh, well. Just call me a traditionalist.