We Were So Much Better Off With Traditional Bouquet

Give me back my Rose Bowl.

Give me back my gently aging neighbor who never understood politics and can’t work a computer.

Give me back golden afternoons in his back yard, a football game between kids, our street against their street, means nothing, means everything.

Give me back Jan. 1, right after the last petals have been swept from the parade.

Give me back 2 p.m., sunlight fading to shadows.

Give me back Granddaddy.

And get rid of that drawling huckster with the comb-over who showed up Sunday to take his place.

Miami against Nebraska ?

An undefeated, top-ranked team against a collection of corn chokers who failed to win even their division after losing their final game by 26 points ?

Two days after the Rose Parade?

Beginning at 5 p.m.?

No floats, no queens, no streaming January brightness ... and for a game that might not even decide the national championship?

The Brother-in-Law of Them All.

Maybe it’s not too late to change.

Maybe the computer geeks can push a button and give us the game we should have had, Pacific 10 champion Oregon versus Big Ten champion Illinois, each team 10-1.

Both are undefeated since October.

Nebraska lost, when, two hours ago?

Both have players who have spent their entire college careers hoping for a trip to Pasadena and Disneyland and Lawry’s.

For Miami and Nebraska, we’re just another belt notch.

How about the BCS sends those guys to the Fiesta Bowl, where they can play a prime-time game in a giant bag of corn chips? Or maybe to the Orange Bowl, which has all the charm of an overnight mail package?

What? Too late? Too bad.

To those Rose Bowl officials who sold out to college football’s powers five years ago, we say, nice 88th birthday party.

It will take us another 88 years to rid the icing of the candle wax.

It’s not completely Granddaddy’s fault, of course.

He was hoodwinked.

He was promised a national championship matchup by human beings who later made the decision with computers. He shook hands with a man to seal a deal with a machine.

That’s the worst part of this, you know.

If real people who live and breath and watch college football were making the decision, Miami’s opponent would be No. 2 Oregon, and that would make sense.

The Ducks lost only by a touchdown to Stanford on Oct. 20, and only then on a couple of fluke special teams plays.

Those who judge by the eyes would take Oregon.

Those who judge by the heart would take Colorado, which finished stronger than any team in the country with wins over highly ranked Nebraska and Texas.

The Buffaloes even scored 62 points against one of those teams.

The team that’s coming here.

Remember when they used to throw roses at each of the two participants when they qualified on the field? The only roses the Corn Chokers saw this year were digital.

If this sounds familiar, last season one-loss Miami defeated one-loss Florida State. Yet the computers sent Florida State to the Orange Bowl to play unbeaten Oklahoma.

Then, the BCS got lucky. Oklahoma won. The nation’s only unbeaten team was its national champion.

The BCS needs the same thing to happen this year. Desperately. It needs Miami to beat the Corn Chokers so somebody can legitimately run off the Rose Bowl field waving one index finger in the air.

If the Corn Chokers win, then they will have no right to claim anything if Oregon beats Colorado in the Fiesta Bowl two days earlier.

We’re number ... number ... aw, the heck with it.

Nebraska won’t know. We won’t care.

For those university presidents looking for one last reason to scrap the entire irrelevant bowl system and institute a playoff that would make them even more money, this is it.

Granddaddy could be part of that playoff. As long as he is still allowed to be, well, Grandaddy.

Give me back my Rose Bowl.

Give me back the Stanford football team marching in the Rose Parade chanting, “Give ‘em the ax, the ax, ax--right in the neck, the neck, the neck.”

That was in 1902.

Give me back Washington linebacker Anthony Kelley sounding surprised that anyone would ask about a national championship shortly after the Huskies beat Purdue.

“You have to understand, this is what every West Coast kid dreams about--the Rose Bowl,” he said.

That was in 2001.

Until now, a circle that has endured a century.

Until now, a tradition unharmed by technology.

While it’s too early to offer a detailed analysis on this season’s participants, I have already procured a scouting report on the roses.

They squirt.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.