Why the Rose Bowl Needs Notre Dame Like Never Before

ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg has an interesting piece up on his Big Ten football blog today focusing on some new rules under the upcoming BCS contract, slated to begin in 2010. The Rose Bowl seems to be the biggest victim.

Under the terms of the new BCS contract, the Rose Bowl would be forced to take a BCS eligible team from a non-BCS conference if it lost the Big Ten or Pac-10 champion to a BCS Championship game.

Let me give you an example.

When Penn State goes 12-0 this year and clinches the No. 1 BCS ranking, they will not play in the Rose Bowl, but in the BCS Championship game. The Rose Bowl then would have their automatic Pac-10 champion and will have to pick a replacement.

Let’s say BYU qualifies for the BCS selections. The Rose Bowl would be forced, by contract, to take BYU and pit them against perhaps USC or whoever the Pac-10 champion may be.

The situation could easily be reversed as well. Should USC advance to the BCS championship game, the Rose Bowl would have to pick Utah if they qualified for the BCS games. If Penn State represented the Big Ten in the Rose Bowl as conference champions, they would have to play Utah.

While much has been made about showing teams like Utah and Boise State more respect when it comes to big-time bowl games—they have earned it—and giving conferences like the WAC and Mountain West more of a piece of the BCS pie, I still see this purely as a move to get Notre Dame back in the mix.

Notre Dame, who does not play in a conference, lives by its own BCS qualifier. All they have to do is rank in the top 10 of the BCS, and it would be near impossible for a BCS bowl to NOT pick them. Bowl games are about money, and Notre Dame fans are everywhere.

While the Rose Bowl may be wary of having to showcase a BYU-Oregon bowl game, the thought of Notre Dame-Penn State, Notre Dame-Ohio State, or Notre Dame-Michigan matchups must be fascinating.

What if the BCS Championship game pits the champions of the Pac-10 and the Big Ten? What if the Rose Bowl lost both of their automatic bids?

According to the rules of the contract, they would have to pick the first BCS qualifier not from a non-BCS conference if applicable, and then they would likely would get one of the first picks of the draw from the rest of the BCS qualifiers.

Don’t expect this to be a regular problem from year-to-year, though, as the contract only states that this scenario would happen the first time the Rose Bowl loses a Big Ten or Pac-10 champion.

This article was originally posted on NittanyWhiteOut.com.