Rose Bowl, at Least, Is Happy to See Nebraska

The perfect storm hit college football’s national title game Sunday, tarnishing the complex formula for selecting contenders and landing the controversy right in the lap of the Rose Bowl and Pasadena.

Across the nation, football coaches and fans lamented the selection of the Nebraska Cornhuskers (11-1) to play the Miami Hurricanes (11-0) in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 3.

But in Pasadena, game planners and merchants couldn’t be happier. Nebraska, whose fans faithfully follow the team across the country, has already presold its 20,694 tickets to the big game, said officials at the Lincoln, Neb., university.

“Controversy is good news because people are talking about your game,” said Mitch Dorger, chief executive of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses, which puts on the Rose Bowl.

Added Ed Paquette, Nebraska’s alumni association director: “We’ll fill up the place. It’ll be a sea of red, that’s for sure,” a reference to the team color.

The Rose Bowl will receive far more attention this year because it is the first national title game to be held there since the 1998 creation of the bowl championship series, commonly called BCS. For the last 55 years, the Rose Bowl had hosted the winners of the Big Ten and Pacific 10 conferences.

Nebraska, a team that lost its last regular-season game, 62-36, to Colorado, squeezed past the Buffaloes into the No. 2 spot in Sunday’s final BCS rankings--and into the Rose Bowl--by five hundredths of one point.

Handing out Rose Bowl berths has been somewhat of a nightmare for the BCS, leaving the matchup unresolved until the last possible moment.

Miami was a lock because it went undefeated. But to watch other teams in the last few weeks, it might have seemed that no one wanted to play in the game known as the “Granddaddy of Them All.”

Invitations were seemingly there to lose for several universities. And lose they did. Oklahoma. Texas. Florida. And on Saturday, Tennessee lost to Louisiana State.

Division I-A college football, unlike many sports, doesn’t have a playoff system. The contestants for the national championship game are determined by the BCS rankings, a computer formula that takes into account several factors, among them the Associated Press media poll and USA Today/ESPN coaches poll, record, strength of schedule and eight computer ratings.

Nebraska, which failed to win even its division of the Big 12 Conference, is the first school in the history of the AP poll to play for the national title after losing its last regular-season game. The Cornhuskers finished fourth in polls conducted by the AP and football coaches across the country.

The biggest losers were Big 12 champion Colorado (10-2), No. 3 in both polls, and Pacific 10 Conference champion Oregon (10-1), No. 2 in both polls.

Oregon will play Colorado in the Jan. 1 Fiesta Bowl at Tempe, Ariz., and the winner could still end up as the top team in the AP poll if Nebraska defeats Miami in the Rose Bowl.

The coaches are contractually obligated to vote for the winner of the BCS title game as the No. 1 team in their poll.

Oregon coach Mike Bellotti could barely contain his anger at the BCS system, calling it a “travesty” and comparing it to a “bad disease like cancer.”

“It was just difficult to explain to our players why we are not there,” Bellotti said on a conference call with reporters. “I didn’t have a lot of good reasons.”

Colorado coach Gary Barnett, whose team ended the season with impressive wins over Nebraska and Texas, likewise was upset. “It’s hard to be gracious at this moment,” he said.

This is the fourth year of the BCS system, which rotates the national championship among four bowl games--the Orange, Sugar, Fiesta and Rose. The benefit of reaching a BCS game is huge: the payout is $11 million to $13 million per university, which is often shared with other members of its athletic conference.

“Somebody told me this morning how good controversy was and I said, ‘OK, if you say so,’ ” said bowl championship series coordinator John Swofford, who is the commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference. “But I don’t think this affects the credibility of it [the BCS].”

Citing Nebraska fans’ fervor for their school, game organizers said they stand a good chance of meeting their economic goals. About $200 million to $250 million is expected to flow into Pasadena and surrounding areas.

“Nebraska coming out here is just what the doctor ordered for the Southern California travel industry,” Dorger said at the Wrigley Mansion, the Tournament’s headquarters in Pasadena.

“We like to say a red wave is heading our way in the new year,” he added.

Paquette of Nebraska said he understands why other schools are upset, but he maintains that his team deserves to play for a national title.

“If you don’t have two undefeated teams, you’ll always have controversy,” Paquette said. “Even though we’re kind of sneaking in the backdoor, we’re still in, and that’s exciting.”

Nebraska and Miami have played each other nine times before, with Nebraska winning five of those games. Nebraska played once before in the Rose Bowl, in 1941, losing to Stanford.

The Rose Bowl game, traditionally held on New Year’s Day, will take place two days after the Tournament of Roses Parade, which remains Jan. 1. Those extra days could mean more money for the local economy, already suffering from the nationwide travel downturn after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, officials said.

On the other hand, the gap could mean that football fans will delay their travel, Paquette said. Nebraska has 40,000 alumni who live within a day’s drive of Southern California, and many of them may want to stay home and watch the other bowl games on Jan. 1, he said.

Pasadena is trying to offer a range of activities, including a food festival in the Old Pasadena shopping district, to keep fans interested.

“There is a special atmosphere this year with this being the championship game,” Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard said.

Dennis Alfieri, a partner in the Twin Palms restaurant in Old Pasadena, said he plans to hire extra staff.

The open-air nightspot, he hopes, will be especially appealing to Nebraska fans escaping the Midwest’s typically bone-chilling weather.

“[They can] sit outside in their short sleeves and polo shirts in the middle of January, and have a very different eating experience,” he said.

Ronald Okum, president of the Tournament of Roses, also believes Nebraska fans will want to participate in all the pregame events, including parties and the parade.

“They’ll want a total experience,” he said.

This isn’t the first time the BCS rankings were controversial. Last season, it was Miami that was left out when Florida State edged the Hurricanes for the No. 2 spot by 0.32 of a point in the BCS rankings, although Miami was No. 2 in the writers’ poll and had defeated Florida State on the field.

Those calling for a playoff or a change in the BCS system are out of luck, at least in the near future. The BCS contract runs through the 2006, when the Rose Bowl next hosts the national title game.

“Two great teams are going to end up in Pasadena,” said Dorger. “You can get all kinds of opinions about who is the best. But this is the system that everyone agreed to.”