BCS Controversy: Rose Bowl Needs to Step Aside in the Interest of Progress

The BCS meetings last month in South Florida delivered the announcement that the college football world has been waiting for. We are headed full-steam ahead toward a four-team playoff.

BCS leaders won't meet again until late June in Chicago, which means that the time in between serves as a great opportunity for individuals associated with the discussions to lobby for their favorite plan.

The Wall Street Journal weighed in with an idea on Friday, and it's the most laughable one yet.

Rachel Bachman wrote, presumably with a straight face (although considering the topic, I'm not sure how that's possible), that the Big Ten and Pac-12 should secede from Football Bowl Subdivision in order to preserve the integrity of the Rose Bowl. Via the Journal: 

"

Proponents say a four-team playoff is the perfect size. They argue it would barely disturb the sport's existing structure, probably adding just one game for two teams at season's end.

What they don't mention is that a playoff would diminish the value of the Rose Bowl, which has long been college football's most prized asset.

"

Well that's simply not true. I mentioned it here and here. 

What Bachman doesn't realize is that the final sentence of that quote should be in past tense. The Rose Bowl was college football's most prized asset, but that importance has long since been diminished by the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) and is never coming back.

The Rose Bowl is a dial-up connection compared to high-speed Internet. It's a VCR+ code compared to DVR. It's a telegraph compared to email. It's yesterday's news.

The Rose Bowl's prominence is gone, and if the Big Ten and Pac-12 secede to appease the Rose Bowl, they would be punching their own ticket to irrelevance.

But as my colleague Michael Felder over at Your Best 11 points out, that may be the best end result possible; and Adam Jacobi over at the Big Ten Blog thinks that Bachman may need to read up on history.

Tradition is what the foundation of college football is built on, but some traditions are better off being left in the past.

The Rose Bowl is one of those traditions.

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