The Bloom Is Off the Rose

Not many have noticed--yet--but the Rose Bowl has taken a major cultural hit. A hard chop at the knees. The granddaddy of them all, the Rose Bowl practically invented New Year’s Day as we know it. Now it’s staggering toward collapse.

Well, perhaps I exaggerate. But not by much. Any obsessive reader of the sports pages or watcher of ESPN2 already knows what I’m talking about. Insidiously, big-time television has lured Rose Bowl officials into abandoning control over their own game. And the result is not pretty.

Never again can you assume the Rose Bowl will host the best teams from the Pac-10 and the Big Ten according to its 100-year tradition. Henceforth, in most years, it will be converted to the Also-Ran Bowl. The Maybe Bowl. The Other Bowl.

Say, for example, USC whups every other team in the Pac-10 and Michigan State does the same in the Big Ten. Will they play in the Rose Bowl? Maybe, or maybe not. USC just as easily could end up playing in New Orleans at the Sugar Bowl. And Michigan could wind up in Tempe at the Fiesta Bowl.

I won’t bore you with the details, but most of these decisions will now be made by computer. That’s right--a computer. The eternal theme of the Rose Bowl--suntanned hunks from Southern California trying to out-finesse the mesomorphs of the Midwest--will be tossed out, lost, forgotten. In its place will come contests with as much meaning as a game of solitaire on your PC.

This development marks the beginning of the end of something. If you think free agency killed the fun of major league baseball, wait till you see what the BCS does to the college bowls, including the Rose.

For those of you who pass up the sports pages, “BCS” stands for Bowl Championship Series. It was invented by sports obsessives who could not tolerate the fact that the old bowl system failed to determine which football team was the best in all the land. The old system, with its whimsical, history-laden pairings, drove the sports obsessives mad.

After all, the obsessives said, what does a game matter if it cannot be fitted into a scheme where one team, and only one team, emerges as the anointed champion of all? Isn’t that the point, to find out exactly which team is No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3? Who cares about the traditions of the Rose Bowl--or any other bowl--in the face of this single question?

So they invented the BCS. Each year, one of the four major bowls is chosen to host the Big Game between the two “best” teams as selected by the computer, wherever they might be. The other bowls then get to grub among the second choices.

This season, the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe was anointed host of the BCS. Therefore, if any team from the Pac-10 or Big Ten emerged from the computer as one of the “best,” it would automatically have played in the Fiesta Bowl rather than the Rose Bowl.

As it happened, of course, UCLA almost got selected. With a perfect record, it only needed one more win over the University of Miami to put itself in position for the computer’s blessing. Then the fates intervened and snatched away the precious moment. The Bruins lost, 49-45.

So now they are coming to the Rose Bowl. As a second choice. As runner-up. UCLA will go to the Rose Bowl in the same way that teams once went to the Hula Bowl. As a pleasant interlude, vaguely shameful, but better than nothing.

“Oh well, we’re still going to the Rose Bowl,” UCLA guard Andy Meyers said after the loss to Miami. “Didn’t that used to be the big one?”

Yup, it did. But no more. Not when you have appearances by teams who wish they were playing somewhere else. Not when a hundred years of tradition have been wiped out in favor of a clean, perfect computer selection.

So we have a travesty, and a question. Why would the tweedy types who run the Rose Bowl agree to the disemboweling of their festival? I mean, these are people who, a couple of years ago, refused to take a corporate sponsor because it would dilute the pure, simple image of the Rose Bowl.

The answer, as ever, appears to be money. ABC, the television network, promised the four bowl organizations half a billion dollars over the next seven years if they would sign up for the BCS. That comes to approximately $125 million for each bowl. In Pasadena, you can throw a lot of finger-sandwich luncheons at the Wrigley mansion for $125 million.

ABC clearly is betting that the BCS will generate much larger audiences than the old bowl system. Network executives say this belief is based on the success of the playoffs in the National Football League. If you can make college football look more like the NFL, the thinking goes, the TV broadcasters and bowl sponsors can make more money off it.

In the spirit of anticipation, in fact, the Rose Bowl raised its prices from last year’s $75 to $110.

Just maybe, though, the financial equation is more complex than it seemed. Early reports suggest that ticket sales for the Rose Bowl are soft this year. Very soft. Dan Rubendall, head of Ticket Palace in La Canada Flintridge, says demand for Rose Bowl seats is down 50% from last year.

“The UCLA fans are disappointed. They’re not coming like they normally do,” Rubendall says. “Personally, I think the BCS has screwed up the market. People are confused, they don’t know what the game means anymore.”

There are also reports that hotel reservations are down this year, suggesting that fans from Wisconsin--UCLA’s opponent this year--feel a secondary disappointment.

Is it possible that television audiences will feel the same way? Has the BCS reduced the rich rewards of four major bowls into one Big Bowl and three losers? We don’t know yet, but ticket sales often presage television viewership. And it appears, right now, that fans have not missed the meaning of the BCS for the Rose Bowl. They are voting against the change by withholding their dollars.

And why would they do anything else? Until this year, the Rose Bowl was the place where the same cultural rivalry played itself out year after year. Some Michigan fans knew Pasadena as well as its residents did. The Rose Bowl had meaning for them and for us. Maybe it was goofy, hidebound, irony-free. But it stayed the same. You could depend on it.

Now it’s become another interchangeable unit of TV entertainment. Subject to schedule change, team change, tradition change.

Check your computer for local listings.