Rose Bowl Sniff Test Underway : Is Hosting a Championship Game Reason Enough to Meddle With Tradition? Some Aren’t Sure

It isn’t easy being a white-gloved town in the crass world of big-time sports. On one hand, you have your dignity to maintain; on the other, you do so love to kick butt.

And so it was that on Wednesday, as word spread that the Rose Bowl had finally surrendered to the push to stage a national college football championship game, Pasadena reacted with its characteristic mixture of boosterism and patrician skittishness.

City councilmen fretted that the deal had seemed a tad precipitous. Then, in the next breath, they extolled it as an economic windfall. Local leaders murmured that, really, they had no idea how much money the city might make on the deal. Then they caught themselves crowing that the Rose Bowl had “struck gold.”

At the venerable Pacific Oaks College and Children’s School near the stadium, faculty member Virginia Kennedy sighed at the thought of the traditional grudge match between the Big Ten and Pacific 10 champions being periodically preempted by a national face-off between two teams from heaven knows where.

“My loyalty to the city coffers says it’s a good thing,” she said, “but our hearts won’t be in it.”

Eavesdropping on her remarks in the entrance to the campus library, Renatta Cooper, a department chairman, had to disagree.

“This says the Rose Bowl isn’t obsolete,” she argued, smiling. Besides, she noted, Pac-10 fans always seemed so blase.

“The out-of-town fans are much more excited. You see them around town, wearing their paraphernalia, and you feel good for them,” she said, laughing.

“It’s only one day, Virginia,” she chided jokingly, secure in the knowledge that, unlike Kennedy, she didn’t live next door to the stadium.

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This week, after more than a year of negotiations, ABC television announced that an association of six college conferences had been formed to determine a national college football championship. Unlike most collegiate sports, major college football has no clear system of playoffs, and the “No. 1” title has been a somewhat subjective award, determined by competing polls, one of sportswriters, one of coaches.

In some years, different national champions have been crowned. Complicating matters was the lucrative tradition of holiday bowl games. One of those games is the Rose Bowl game, which traditionally has capped Pasadena’s civic extravaganza, the Tournament of Roses, with a match between the champions of the rival Big Ten and Pac-10 football conferences.

The tradition, in most years, meant that at least one Southern California team--USC or UCLA--would play in the bowl. But it also meant that if a Big Ten or Pac-10 champ had been voted No. 1 or No. 2 in the nation, it couldn’t square off for the top spot in another bowl game because of its commitment to the Rose Bowl.

Consequently, in 1991, when Washington and Miami finished the season undefeated, they were unable to go head to head to decide the No. 1 spot because Washington was committed to the Rose Bowl.

And in 1994, when Penn State was ranked second in the United States, fans yearned for a matchup with top-ranked Nebraska. Instead, Penn State was stuck with Oregon in the Rose Bowl.

For some years, sentiment among the teams and the fans has moved toward a playoff of some sort. But the organizers of the Rose Bowl game--the nonprofit Tournament of Roses Assn.--had resisted, in part because they found the growing commercialism of collegiate athletics distasteful, and in part because they feared the traditional Pac-10/Big Ten game, with higher TV ratings and payouts than any other bowl game, might lose its prestige.

Harriman Cronk, the head of the football committee for the Tournament of Roses, said that several years ago, when a committee of college officials worked up a scheme for a national playoff, “the Rose Bowl was a quarter-final game” in their plan.

“How many people Back East would come out here for a quarterfinal game?” he asked. And yet, he added, it was clear the call for a playoff was not about to end.

Cronk said he met with commissioners of the Big Ten and Pac-10 in December, and was told that they wanted to continue the tradition of the Rose Bowl face-off, but play in a championship game if they had a top-ranked team.

The resulting system, which takes effect in 1999, would create a national championship game that would be played on Jan. 1 or thereabouts, and would rotate among the Rose Bowl and three other yet-to-be-announced bowls. In off years, the Rose Bowl would host the champions of the Big Ten and the Pac-10.

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The stadium’s first championship game, under the new arrangement, is slated for 2002. However, if the Big Ten or Pac-10 ends the regular season with a No. 1 team before that, the Rose Bowl will get early dibs on the title game, and someone else will host the 2002 championship game. The Rose Parade would go off as usual on game day, regardless of who plays.

The particulars--especially the financial particulars--are still being hammered out. The bulk of the revenue from the Rose Bowl game comes from TV revenues. Under the new system, the ABC television network, which will broadcast the games, has promised that each of the four bowls involved will receive $18.5 million a year from the network. In addition, Cronk said, there is revenue from ticket sales and concessions.

Cronk said that despite an anticipated boost in TV revenues, he doesn’t expect the city or the association to benefit much from a championship game. Most of that money, he predicted, will go to the college football conferences.

Rather, he said, if the city gets an economic windfall, it will more likely come from the influx of out-of-town fans who will boost local tax revenue by spending their money at Pasadena businesses.

Pasadena City Manager Phil Hawkey noted that, according to a recent study, the Bowl game and parade bring in $125 million for Southern California, the majority for Pasadena businesses. The 1993 Super Bowl in Pasadena gave a $182-million boost to the area economy, a UCLA study showed.

“It certainly can be as big as a Super Bowl,” said Hawkey of the national championship. “It depends on the teams.”

Even so, the community, long ambivalent about its stadium, was reserved in its response to the national championship plan.

“We have a lot of local pride. We like to see a West Coast team play here,” said Kathryn Swanson, a docent in Pasadena’s landmark of Craftsman-style architecture, the Gamble House.

But, she added, “we have to do what’s best for the greatest number of people. Once we get used to the idea, it could be a good thing.”

Times correspondent Richard Winton contributed to this report.

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What It All Means To Pasadena

As news spread that the Rose Bowl would be involved in the move to create a national college football championship game, Pasadena debated the possible advantages and disadvantages of such a change.

Pros

* Would keep traditional Pac- 10 / Big Ten grudge match most years, and gave the Rose Bowl a championship game every fourth year.

* A championship game would boost the Southern California and Pasadena economics by as much as $182 million , compared with $125 million for Pac- 10 / Big Ten match.

Cons

* Would increase the likelihood that every fourth year, the championship game at the Rose Bowl would not have UCLA, USC or one of their Pac-10 rivals.

* The Rose Bowl could be seen as giving into the growing commercialism of college athletics.