Football Outrage Takes Bloom Off Rose Bowl Tradition

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says he wants to “blow up boxes.” I have a useless box for him to blow up. It’s called the BCS.

For the edification of countless Californians who think about college football only on New Year’s Day -- mostly while watching the Rose Bowl as they scarf munchies and get all warm and cozy with friends and family -- BCS stands for Bowl Championship Series.

BCS also stands for baloney, to put it politely. BCS is bad for California -- indeed, the entire West Coast. Bad for tradition. Bad for quality of life.

BCS is a system created by the big universities and athletic conferences, prodded by TV networks, to determine a true national college football champion. It’s also a generator of millions more in TV ad revenues.

There’s a rating system and a championship game between the top two teams. On Jan. 4, No. 1 USC will play No. 2 Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl.

But USC won outright or shared many national titles long before the BCS. Moreover, the only real way to produce a universally accepted champ is through a playoff series, as in college basketball’s March Madness. The experts, however, say that can’t work for football.

So a system has been forced on Californians that has eviscerated their beloved “granddaddy of all bowls.” The convoluted system on Sunday denied access by any Pacific 10 team -- from California, Oregon, Washington or Arizona -- to our own Rose Bowl.

And this, after all, is our institution. It doesn’t belong to the BCS. Or shouldn’t.

It was especially outrageous that the BCS bumped Cal -- UC Berkeley -- out of the Rose Bowl in favor of Texas. Traditionally, the Pac-10 and Big Ten champs have squared off Jan. 1. This year, Pac-10 winner USC has been shuffled off to the Orange Bowl, runner-up Cal is relegated to the Holiday Bowl and, in Pasadena, Big Ten titlist Michigan plays Texas.

Texas? First, the Texas governor gets elected and reelected president, beating out California’s candidates. The Texas power pirates rob California blind during the energy crisis. Now Texas pushes Cal out of its rightful place in the Rose Bowl.

The Cal Bears and Texas Longhorns had identical 10-1 records, and all season the Bears had been ranked by the BCS ahead of the cows. But the Texas coach, like some ward politician, successfully lobbied colleagues and sportswriters to vote for his team on the final ballot. Next year, teams may be hiring political consultants and running TV attack ads against their rivals.

Look, Cal has not been to the Rose Bowl since 1959, and it’s just plain wrong that the Bears were locked out this year.

But what really boils me is the crumbling of another cherished institution--this one involving a historic, healthy rivalry between West Coast and Midwest teams and, yes, family values.

My parents, like many Californians, bought their first TV set to watch the Rose Bowl game in the late 1940s, prompting a New Year’s Day party tradition with family and friends. We rooted for the West Coast -- usually represented by a California team -- against the feared but respected Midwest.

Believe me, there wouldn’t have been much interest in a Michigan-Texas matchup.

The Rose Bowl used to be a California birthright. Study hard and you too could go to a school that could go to the Rose Bowl. Maybe you could even play in the Rose Bowl.

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates grew up in Fullerton and remembers watching Rose Bowl games on TV with his family. “It was the highlight of the whole year.”

Bates went to Cal and started at right end on the ’59 Rose Bowl team. “The weather was beautiful,” he recalls.

“I lined up for the kickoff and it was wonderful -- 100,000 people there, on national TV. But standing there, it was like I had a flashback. Like I’d reverted back to being a kid and was having a pickup game with neighbors. I actually had a lot of fun, although we lost pretty badly.” (Iowa 38, Cal 12.)

This BCS, Bates says, “is crazy. It’s a joke. It’s taken a lot of luster off the Rose Bowl.”

Senate Republican Leader Richard Ackerman of Irvine also is a Cal alum who grew up in Long Beach revering the Rose Bowl. Now he’s furious and plans to introduce an anti-BCS resolution.

“It probably should be more subtle than calling for blowing up the BCS,” Ackerman says. “But maybe not. It should be dissolved.”

Says Sen. Jack Scott (D-Altadena), a Texas native and former Pasadena City College president: “I’m very upset. There should be a built-in guarantee of a West Coast team being the host of the Rose Bowl.”

“I’ve got an idea,” says State Board of Equalization member Bill Leonard of San Bernardino, his tongue in cheek. “Get me the names of the Pac-10 people responsible for this scandal and I’ll have their tax returns audited.”

Here’s another good idea. The governor should call an immediate special session of the Legislature to enact these urgency bills:

* Treat all Texans like illegal immigrants. Refuse to recognize their driver’s licenses.

* The Longhorns’ Rose Bowl appearance will earn their Big 12 Conference $4.5 million. Tax it big -- say, 40%. Call it a cleanup fee. Exempt the Big Ten team from any tax.

* Sock a special occupancy surtax on all Texans’ hotel bills.

* Add a goodly surtax to gate admissions and concession sales on the Texas side of the stadium.

* Ban the blimp.

* And if there are any clouds in the sky, seed them.

California should deter this abhorrent behavior. We should take back the Rose Bowl.

Any system that doesn’t permit a West Coast team to play in the Rose Bowl should be blown up. And Schwarzenegger’s just the guy who could do it.