The College Football Playoffs and The Rose Bowl Game: The Passing of a Southern California Tradition?

by Steven Dugan

On January 1, 1890, members of Pasadena’s Valley Hunt Club organized a festival to celebrate the new year. Many members of the club moved to California with their families from the Midwest and East, and the parade was designed in part to show off their new California homes, as well as to boast about the mild weather we enjoy here, even during the winter months. In fact, at a club meeting, Professor Charles F. Holder announced, “In New York, people are buried in the snow. Here our flowers are blooming, and our oranges are about to bear. Let’s hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise.” While watching the parade on television, we often hear the commentators speak about the weather during the parade. Sure, it may be in the low 40s in the morning, but by the time the Rose Bowl game kicks off, temperatures usually warm up. One popular joke amongst southern Californians is that fans from the Midwest and East temporarily move to California during the mild weather in the winter after the Rose Bowl and move back when the first earthquake occurs.

That first festival included a parade with flower-covered horse-drawn carriages, foot races, polo matches, and a game of tug-of-war that attracted 2,000 spectators. Professor Holder suggested to the Valley Hunt Club that the festival be named the “Tournament of Roses,” because of the beautiful displays of flowers on the carriages and elsewhere during the event. Marching bands and motorized floats soon followed. In 1895, as the festival grew, the Club created a separate organization, whose sole responsibility was to plan and run the annual Tournament of Roses. By 1900, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association planned activities that included ostrich races, bronco busting demonstrations, and the odd novelty of a race between a camel and an elephant. Unsurprisingly, the elephant remains undefeated to this day in its only race. It’s good to retire as a winner.

With only four exceptions: 1942, 1943, 1945 (because of World War II) and 2021 (due to COVID-19 restrictions), the parade has been held every year, rain or shine. KTLA is credited with televising the first Rose Parade in 1947. It has been broadcast on television and online to 217 countries (79 of them live in 2009) in over 20 languages, and reaches upwards of 80 million people every year. It’s safe to say that the Rose Parade has been a worldwide tradition for over 80 years! One of its core elements through the decades is the featuring of floats from southern California cities, like the one below from Temple City in 1925.

After an initial contest in 1902 and then every year since 1916, the Rose Bowl football game has been played on January 1^st (or 2^nd if New Year’s Day falls on a Sunday) at the stadium of that name in Pasadena. Originally called the East vs. West game, it soon took on the moniker of the Rose Bowl Game, or simply, “The Rose Bowl,” while it is often referred to as “The Granddaddy of Them All,” when the stadium was completed in 1922 (predating the Los Angeles Coliseum by a mere seven months). The contest grew in popularity very quickly. Walter P. Temple, grandson of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste, held season tickets to the Rose Bowl for many years. By the time the Temple family reacquired the Homestead in 1917, the Rose Parade was nearly 30 years old, and the game was in its infancy.

From 1947 through 2001, the game pitted the champions of the Pac-8/10/12 Conference versus the champions of the Big Ten Conference. In 1942, during World War II, the game was moved to Durham, North Carolina, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor a little more than three weeks prior, and above 50,000 fans watched Oregon State upset Duke, 20-16. In 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic and due to California’s stringent restrictions, the contest was moved to Arlington, Texas, where 16,000 spectators watched Alabama beat Notre Dame, 31-14.

After 2001, the game was part of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), where on a rotating basis, the Rose Bowl hosted a semi-final or the national championship contest. When that occurred, teams from different conferences could play at the Rose Bowl. The BCS was replaced in 2014 by the College Football Playoff (CFP), and the rotation of semi-final and national championship games continued, with the conventional Rose Bowl match-up remaining during the years in between. Since the beginning of the century, the Rose Bowl has hosted two National Championship Games and three semi-final contests, with only two featuring a Pac-12 or Big Ten team (USC in 2006 and Oregon in 2015).

In late November 2022, Tournament of Roses officials signed a contract with the CFP Board of Managers to join the expansion of the playoffs from the previous 4 to the current 12 teams. This new contract takes effect for the 2024-25 season. With this agreement, the Rose Bowl joins the other five major bowls (Cotton, Fiesta, Orange, Peach, and Sugar) in a rotating playoff system, in which every three years each will be either a quarter-final or semi-final game. So, today’s Rose Bowl battle between Michigan (of the Big 10 Conference) and Alabama (of the Southeastern Conference) is a semi-final game under the current contract, along with that of the Sugar Bowl. The winners of these games will meet in the National Championship game on January 8, 2024 in Houston, TX. The Rose and Sugar Bowls will then take their place in the new playoff rotation after the new contract takes effect next season.

The 2023 Rose Bowl Game, with Penn State emerging victorious over Utah, 35-21, could end up being the last traditional match-up between the champions of the Pac-12 and Big Ten conferences under the original agreement. Since the creation of the BCS and later the CFP, when the Rose Bowl was not in the playoff rotation, the traditional match-up would continue. One would presume that the old agreement would then be followed in between.

The recent realignment of college conferences, however, has thrown an unexpected wrench into the bowl system—especially for the Pac-12 Conference and the Rose Bowl. Conferences across the country have added teams from all over the country, not necessarily in their region. For example, USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington are moving to the Big 10 Conference (which will ultimately have 16 teams). All other Pac-12 teams, except Oregon State and Washington State, will move to other conferences next season. With the four former Pac-12 teams joining the Big 10,  this means if any of them winds up playing in the Rose Bowl, it would be the first to play as a member of both conferences from the traditional match-up.  Who knows what will happen to the Pac-12 Conference and its participation in the Rose Bowl?

One last Rose Bowl tradition that could be threatened under the new contract is the 2:00 p.m. start time, which has happened since 1952. Part of the reason lies in the fact that at the end of the game (approximately 3 hours later), the sun is setting over the San Gabriel Mountains, providing a majestic back drop as the winning team is celebrating— “heading off into the sunset,” so to speak, with its own Hollywood ending.  As a southern California native, what I’d miss out of all the traditions that are changing with the Rose Bowl would be the time of the game and the winning team celebrating as the sun sets in the west. Hopefully, the powers that be will realize the charm of that aspect.

The college football bowl season is filled with tradition. The Rose Bowl Game has been played continuously in Pasadena (with few exceptions) yearly since 1916. With the game being packaged with the parade, the popularity of both will continue. But over the last 20 years, the traditions of the Bowl system have been changing, and many fans are like Tevye, the father of Fiddler on the Roof, and lamenting some of these changes. Lucrative television contracts seem to be running the show, and it appears that the 1947 agreement will not happen every year, and it is less likely now that the existence of the Pac-12 is in question. Regardless of which teams are playing, the Rose Bowl still holds the distinction of being the oldest and the first college bowl game. That title can never be taken away.

So, is this the end of the traditions of the Rose Bowl Game? Will it still hold the luster of its West vs. East matchups, even though every three years it will be in the rotation of the College Football Playoffs? Will the game still be played on New Year’s Day? Will the recent conference realignment lead to other matchup agreements that will take the place of the system that has lasted about four generations? It will be interesting to see what traditions stay and which ones are sacrificed for the new playoff system. Nowhere in this country are the traditions of the Rose Parade and Game so sacrosanct as they are in southern California. Rose Bowl traditionalists worry that altering or abandoning the Pac-12/Big Ten agreement will cause the Rose Bowl to lose its unique status as the “Granddaddy of them All.” One might think, “So what? It’s just a football game, who cares when it begins and ends?” Perhaps deep down, southern Californians want to continue to honor the words of Professor Charles F. Holder, who said, “Let’s hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise.”