Thorns in the System

Nearly four years later, it is still an ugly memory.

A Rose Bowl football game being played, but not on the usual Jan. 1 date.

No team from the Pacific 10 or Big Ten conferences in sight after pass-happy, flamboyant Oregon was knocked out of its rightful place in Pasadena by a complex mathematical formula that sent forward Nebraska, even though the Cornhuskers had been badly beaten in their final regular-season game.

The game, played on Jan. 3, 2002, was a mismatch -- Miami leading Nebraska, 34-0 ... at halftime.

That’s how it went the first time the Rose Bowl sidestepped tradition and became the BCS championship game.

This season, college football’s national championship game returns to the Rose Bowl for a second time, again knocking all routine aside. The game will be played Jan. 4; the parade is on Jan. 2. On New Year’s Day, viewers will be stuck watching lesser bowls played without the backdrop of the San Gabriel Mountains.

In a word, it will be ... “different,” says Mitch Dorger, executive director of the Rose Bowl.

“It’s Jan. 4 instead of New Year’s Day, so all the events aren’t as integrated,” he says. “The game is at night so that means doing things differently for the pregame show.

“Because it’s not on a holiday we have to take into account it’s a working day for businesses, for traffic, things that normally don’t take place. Odds are, we’ll have teams and conferences involved who are not as familiar as the Pac-10, the Big Ten, of our traditions.

“We do things a little differently. We have to make them aware earlier, tell them it’s an 80-year-old stadium. It’s just different.”

Different might not be good.

Tom Hansen, commissioner of the Pac-10, muses that, “maybe it wouldn’t be great if, say, Florida State and Miami played in it. Neither team travels that well.”

Or it could be grand, this 2006 Rose Bowl.

It could have USC playing for history, trying to become the first team to win three straight Associated Press national titles. It could be the final, glorious college appearance for two-time Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Matt Leinart. Or for first-time Heisman winner Reggie Bush, who might hear thousands of Trojan fans singing “Don’t go, Reggie,” even though they all know Bush will be taking off for the NFL if the season is as triumphant as it could be.

Dave Davis, chairman of the Rose Bowl football committee and immediate past president of the Rose Bowl, takes a temperate approach to the coming season of polls and computers, of weekly guesses about who is in and who is out of the Rose Bowl.

First, there is full disclosure: “I’m an SC grad,” he says. “From my personal perspective, it would be wonderful to see USC here. Obviously, as long as USC is in the national title picture this year, there will be a lot of local excitement. Just look at the coverage in your sports section. Then you’ve got Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush on the cover of every magazine, every sports or college football magazine.

“Down at campus the other day, we had Salute to Troy and 30,000 people came out. Around here that’s unbelievable, almost goofy.”

There is, however, a “but.”

“The impact financially when a local team is in the game is somewhat less,” Davis says. “It’s not likely many SC fans stay at hotels or eat much at local restaurants. But that doesn’t affect the game directly. Our tickets are sold. We’ll just wait and see.”

Dorger said there were “wonderful aspects and not so wonderful aspects” of having a local team involved. “It all depends on what viewpoint you have.

“The Rose Bowl is great friends with USC and we’re always pleased to see them have a successful year. But the restaurants and hotels don’t do quite as well. We make a little less money in terms of souvenirs sold, memorabilia, apparel sales. But the demand for tickets will be high, so I suspect there will be some businesses that will take advantage of that.”

Nobody involved with the Rose Bowl wants to say it publicly, but after the disappointing 2002 game -- disappointing even though Nebraska brought an estimated 40,000 fans -- organizers would be very pleased to see USC playing Michigan or Iowa or Ohio State for the national championship.

It would be an old-fashioned game created from the newfangled system.

“There’s no doubt tradition matters to some of us here,” Davis says.

Lynne Hess, president and CEO of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce, says businesses need not be concerned which teams come to town.

“We’re full, no matter what, whether the teams come from Southern California or elsewhere,” she says. “For Pasadena, who plays here doesn’t really matter.”

But it would matter to football fans if there were another Miami-Nebraska fiasco. The Cornuskers came to Pasadena in 2002 off a 62-36 loss to Colorado in their final regular-season game. The crushing defeat kept Nebraska out of the Big 12 championship game but not out of the national championship game. Meanwhile, Pac-10 champion Oregon, by dint of the computer, was sent to the Fiesta Bowl to beat up on Colorado, 38-16, and finish 11-1.

“It was a real shame, what happened to Oregon in 2002,” Hansen said. “It should have been Oregon against Miami then, and hopefully we have a better system now.”

Davis says UCLA researchers studied both the 2002 national championship game and the 2005 Rose Bowl with Michigan against Texas (instead of California, which got knocked out of the game by the computer on the last weekend of the regular season, another BCS nightmare).

“The economic benefit to the area was about $370 million,” Davis says, “and direct spending was about $208 million. It didn’t vary much, depending on whether the game was the national championship or not.”

Tickets aren’t available through any conventional methods no matter which teams qualify. The game is contractually sold out every year. Hopeful locals might root for a powerhouse with a fan base that doesn’t travel well because participating schools and conferences do get tickets. Right now, on the website Ticketsnow.com, a fan could buy end zone seats for $565 or spend $1,400 to sit between the 30-yard lines.

And if you buy now, the site promises, you can get $100 off. But then you take a chance. That new BCS computer system? What if it spits out another Miami-Nebraska debacle? So local fans might want to wait until 2010.

Then there will be two games at the Rose Bowl. There will be a national championship game. But first there will be a Rose Bowl.

It will be another new system, the BCS championship game split entirely from the usual run of bowl games. Two local games. Twice as many tickets. Twice the opportunity for local businesses to thrive.

Suggested disclaimer: Computers still will be involved.