Rose Bowl to take At-Large Teams

The BCS has announced that the Rose Bowl will now give teams from non-BCS conferences bids, if either the Pac-10 or Big Ten Champ goes to the national championship game. The Rose Bowl is required to take a "BCS Buster" if it loses one of it's traditional contenders to the BCS Championship Game.

First off: What does this mean for Bay Area teams?

It means that if USC wins the Pac-10 and goes on to the national championship game, Cal may once again not go to the Rose Bowl. The same would go if Stanford finishes second in the Conference of Champions (but, let's face it, the Cardinal are at least 2 years away from contending for a Pac-10 crown).

This is a terrible move by the BCS, and it damages not only Big Ten and the Pac-10, but it tarnishes the tradition of the Rose Bowl. Since it's inception, the Rose Bowl has pitted teams from (what are now) the BCS automatic qualifying conferences against eacother--usually a Big Ten-Pac-1o matchup. Allowing teams from even the SEC, ACC or Big East to play in the game would, to me, be a no-no. The Rose Bowl is the Grandaddy of them All.

I'm all for more acess to BCS games for non-BCS conference teams, but the Rose Bowl is off limits; it has too much tradition behind it, and I for one would not want that tradition to be changed. Once a BCS-buster team plays in the Rose Bowl, the Grandaddy will cease to be, replaced by another sell-out sponsored BCS bowl game like the "Fed-Ex Orange Bowl" or the "Allstate Sugar Bowl."

Until 1999 the Rose Bowl went without a sponsor, and even now it's The Rose Bowl presented by AT&T, and not the "AT&T Rose Bowl."

The BCS has made yet another bonehead move by forcing the Tournament of Roses to allow teams from the "lesser conferences" to play. Not only because it hurts the Pac-10's chances of getting a second BCS team, but because it destroys the tradition of the most traditional bowl game in existence.