College Football Playoffs: Rose Bowl Plan Proves Big Ten Doesn't Care About Fans

One of the most enticing aspects of the recent BCS meetings, when a playoff became the new reality in college football, was the notion that perhaps postseason football could be played on the Big Ten's turf.

So with the idea of playoff games needing a host, 12 member programs each with their own TV-ready football stadium and rabid fanbase, and even three NFL stadiums in the Midwest eagerly lining up to host playoff games, what did the Big Ten do?

It told its fans to either go to southern California or go to hell.

"There was a pretty strong consensus among the ADs that we'd like to have the playoff within the bowl system," Nebraska athletic director Tom Osborne said. "It would be a competitive advantage to have semifinal games at home fields. ... But the bowls have been good to us. If you took them out of the playoff, it would pretty much destroy the bowl system."

As it stands right now, the Big Ten goes to the Pac-12's backyard to play in the Rose Bowl, various sites in Florida to face the SEC in three different bowl games, and to Texas and Arizona for three more games which are at best neutral sites.

There is one tie-in with the Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl in Detroit; it's for the Big Ten's eighth-best team, and the Big Ten has only been able to fill that role three times in the last nine years.

There is no major conference in college football of whom the bowl system asks more than the Big Ten. The conference's top four bowl tie-ins are all in hostile territory, the only bowl in the entire Midwest is that MAC-fest in Detroit and the Granddaddy was so adamant about maintaining the Big Ten-Pac-10 relationship in the mid-'90s that it ruined a Big Ten team's chances at a true national championship. Twice.

What on earth about all this, then, should lead one to believe that the bowl system, the Rose Bowl itself, and the Big Ten have the fans' best interests in mind?

Jim Delany and his athletic directors owe it to the Big Ten's fans and everyone else in the Midwest who wants to see some postseason football to explain why, exactly, the Big Ten is so dead-set on sending its fans to Pasadena. Simply pointing at tradition as an inscrutable positive is not enough. 

The Rose Bowl is a great relic of history, without question. It's an experience unlike any other in college football. But it's also: A) a needless competitive disadvantage with a national championship on the line, and B) prohibitively expensive to thousands of Big Ten fans who could otherwise afford to see a game in their home city.

Would you enjoy Pasadena? Sure. But just because someone's hand is in your pocket doesn't mean they're trying to show you a good time, and the Big Ten and the Rose Bowl have been trying to shove their hands in fans' pockets for quite a while now.