The Rose Bowl is the fax machine of bowl games, it hasn't been relevant in decades.
My hatred of the Rose Bowl, like so many things I despise in my life, goes back to the early 80s. It was as predictable as the sun rising in the East.
1) Big 10 team gets hyped to the moon as a great team.
2) Media spends entire CFB season boosting Big 10 team.
3) Big 10 team gets exposed as complete fraud by unknown Pac 10 team in Rose Bowl, usually unknown because of East Coast coverage bias.
The Pac 8/10 beat the B1G SEVENTEEN TIMES in 20 years.
And several of those games weren't close.
And yet we'd get it all again year after year after year.
The B1G would send Bo or Ohio St almost every year with the occasional Iowa breakthrough, the press would treat them like royalty - and they'd get clobbered by, well, anybody. They lost when it was USC, they lost when it was UCLA, they lost when it was Washington, they lost when it was Stanford.
THEY LOST WHEN IT WAS ARIZONA STATE!!!!
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The other issue that didn't set well with me was when Michigan lost to Sparty in 1993 - and got on the bus looking like you'd stolen their child. The reason? "Well, losing to Notre Dame didn't bother them because they could (wait for it) STILL GO TO THE ROSE BOWL!!!"
I'm sorry, I'm a victim of a public school education - and I did live in the Midwest one year - but how in the world "Notre Dame beats us, who cares, just so long as we make the Rose Bowl" is being anything but a pathetic loser is beyond me.
In 1992 - the night we tried to give Miss St the game but they wouldn't take it - Beano Cook and Lee Corso got into it on what passed for Game Day back then. #3 Michigan, their only blemish a tie with Notre Dame in the opener, PLAYED FOR A TIE against 5-4 Illinois.
WHY you ask? Corso, the former Big Ten coach, said Gary Moeller made the right decision because "if you are from the Big 10, the Rose Bowl is your goal." Beano Cook unloaded on him with two putdowns, the first saying "I could understand playing for a tie if you're Indiana (Corso's team) and don't go very often but THIS IS MICHIGAN!" He then capped it off with, "That's why the Big Ten is a mediocre conference, they think the Rose Bowl is the Holy Grail."
See, I "get" the Big Ten front offices wanting it - because it paid more than any other game.
I "get" the game wanting those Big Ten teams, because they tend to have the largest enrollments and alumni widespread.
But then I sat down and noticed when I looked at old Rose Bowl results: "wow, Alabama was 4-1-1, Tech won it, Georgia won it - and all of a sudden they STOPPED inviting SEC teams to the game!"
No, it wasn't THAT simple, and I get TV changed everything, too.
But the Rose Bowl is why we couldn't have a playoff 40 years ago, 50 years ago, 60 years ago.
Even once we had the BCS, they were the aging Mafia don calling the shots.
You know what happens to aging Mafia dons?
They die.
The Rose Bowl could vanish tomorrow - and nobody would miss it.