To a certain extent, the Rose Bowl will never be the same in college football. Once USC leaves for the Big Ten in 2024, we will never again have the traditional Big Ten versus Pac-12 Granddaddy on January 1, just after 2 p.m. in the Arroyo Seco. Sure, the Big Ten and Pac-12 might play in a future Rose Bowl game when USC is in its new conference, but that would be a playoff quarterfinal or semifinal, not as a standalone game with a tradition reaching back to the 1945 college football season.
USC’s departure to the Big Ten has placed college football and the Rose Bowl in a new era in which old traditions just don’t matter as much. The pull of tradition, which was so strong in the 1980s, has been broken by modern forces and the overwhelming demand for television dollars. The sport is far more national, far less regional, and governed by money more than historical associations and rites of passage.
If the Rose Bowl will never quite be the same once USC leaves for the Big Ten, is there a way to reimagine an event which puts USC and Ohio State or Michigan on the same field in Pasadena?
Actually, there is.
College sports consultant Tony Altimore, at The Voice of College Football with host Mark Rogers, makes this very suggestion in a segment beginning at 1:01:10 of this video:
Think about it: This idea is perfect for the new era of college football in which we have 16-team conferences in the Big Ten and SEC.
USC and Ohio State are not going to play every year, since the Big Ten hopes the schools will meet in the Big Ten Championship Game. However, creating a conference semifinal round would be a perfect way for more high-end Big Ten (also SEC) teams to meet in what would be College Football Playoff elimination games which would fetch a ton of television dollars for Fox and ESPN. If three or four Big Ten or SEC teams were all in the playoff hunt in late November, conference semifinal games give TV a perfect way to put them together in a flex-scheduled game, meaning…
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