The Rose Bowl game is dead — it signed its own death warrant
The Rose Bowl game, an annual sports spectacle embodying cherished California conceptions of beauty and inclusion, is dead.
It was 121 years old.
The cause of death was our winner-take-all culture.
In Pasadena, city officials remained in denial, claiming that the Rose Bowl was very much alive. After all, the old stadium is still called the “Rose Bowl” and will host college football playoffs in the future.
But the Rose Bowl itself — a post-season football game pitting top teams from the West (Pac-12) and East (Big Ten) — is no more.
The Rose Bowl was known as “the granddaddy of them all” because, when first played by the University of Michigan and Stanford on Jan. 1, 1902, it was the first post-season college football bowl game.
Once considered cuttingedge, the Rose Bowl represented values so old-fashioned that they now seem foreign.
Today, Americans are bitterly divided by politics, region and identity. Our business and government systems spread division through competitions that identify one winner, making everyone else a loser.
The Rose Bowl incubated a different tradition — of college football bowl games that brought together Americans from different regions. This bowl system produced many winners, rather than just one. Champions of the Rose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl and the Orange
Bowl could each claim a share of a mythical national championship.
But such democratic-minded spirit couldn't long survive in our country. Television executives and football-playing universities believed they could draw bigger audiences — and make more money — with a college football playoff system.
The Rose Bowl and other bowls resisted a playoff for decades. But the pressure grew. President Obama even lobbied for a winner-take-all national football playoff, arguing: “If you've got a bunch of teams who play throughout the season, and many of them have one loss or two losses, there's no clear decisive winner.”
In 2014, the Rose Bowl agreed to become part of the playoff system. The Rose Bowl negotiated a deal preserving its East-West tradition in part; most years, it could pit a Pac-12 and Big Ten champion, but every third year, it would instead host a playoff semi-final.
Sadly, that compromise only delayed the game's death.
In 2022, television companies and college football conferences moved to expand the playoffs from four teams to 12 to make more money. The Rose Bowl resisted this push, but had little leverage.
So the Rose Bowl signed its own death warrant this fall — giving up not only its traditional East-West matchup, but also its traditional time, on the afternoon of New Year's Day. Instead, the Rose Bowl will be just another playoff game.
In Pasadena, city leaders have shamelessly spun the death of their traditional game as a victory. More tourists might visit our hometown because of greater excitement around a playoff, they've said. But that's nonsense. Pasadena needed to keep a college football game and related revenues to help fund the Rose Parade.
Now, reflecting on the death of the Rose Bowl, you may think that your columnist has lost perspective about his hometown tradition. It's only a game, right?
But it is you, the sanguine, who have lost perspective.
I read the loss of the Rose Bowl through the work of the French philosopher Jean-Pierre Dupuy, a longtime Stanford professor and friend to former Gov. Jerry Brown.
Dupuy is a self-described “enlightened doomsayer,” a philosopher of apocalypse. He argues that “humanity is on a suicidal course, headed straight for catastrophe.” Why? Because we don't respect sacred things. We blow through limits. In so doing, we produce constant calamities and catastrophes, and unleash violence.
The Rose Bowl game is one such sacred ritual that inspired togetherness. Its death takes us one step closer to the end of the world. A memorial service for the Rose Bowl will be held Jan. 2 — the final Rose Bowl game with a traditional Pac 12Big Ten matchup, Penn State vs. Utah. Please don't send flowers — the Rose Parade already has thousands of them.