Stars Aligning for Notre Dame vs. Nebraska Rose Bowl

History, tradition and blue bloods.

These are words that would inevitably be used when talking about a Rose Bowl matchup between the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

Judging by the way the current college football season is shaping up, this dream game between two of the titans of the sport on arguably the sport's greatest stage is not that far off from becoming a reality.

Nebraska is in the driver's seat of the Big Ten's Legends division. They control their own destiny by winning out and would meet what would almost certainly be an inferior team on paper in the Big Ten Championship game in Indianapolis.

Notre Dame should be favored in every game that remains on their schedule. They can even afford to lose to Southern Cal at the end of the season and still be BCS-bowl eligible.

Other than Nebraska and Notre Dame doing their part, two other teams will have a say in who plays where in January.

Oregon will have to be more impressive than both Notre Dame and Kansas State in order to make it to the BCS title game. Should they accomplish that feat, the Rose Bowl, by way of losing one of its guaranteed participants, has first dibs on filling the second spot in the game with a BCS-eligible team not already tied into another bowl.

Kansas State would need to win the Big 12 Conference title without doing enough to finish in the top two of the BCS rankings, thus sending them to the Fiesta Bowl.

Should Nebraska win the Big Ten, the Rose Bowl committee would be crazy not to invite Notre Dame to face off with the Huskers in "The grand daddy of them all." Notre Dame is college football's one true national brand and Nebraska fans travel as well as anyone in the country.

It would also give the Rose Bowl a chance to showcase one of the nation's elite players and sure-fire first round NFL draft pick in Manti Te'o, Notre Dame's ultra-talented linebacker.

College football purists across the country must be rooting for all the chips to fall into place in order to provide us with a game full of nostalgia and historical meaning. Should it happen, given the size of the fanbases and the number of TV sets across the country dedicated to each team, the ratings are almost sure to to trump an Alabama vs. Oregon BCS title game.