PASADENA, Calif. — In the end, the sky opened up and rained over the Rose Bowl. Some would say he was crying.
Don’t try to sell that to the smiling, dancing, happy Nittany Lions (of the Valley) practically floating off the field at the end of the program’s first Rose Bowl win in 27 years. (Only his second.)
“It means the world,” said redshirt freshman linebacker Dominic DeLuca, blessed by the fate of wearing No. 1 Franco Harris. 34.
“I hope somewhere up there he’s smiling,” DeLuca added.
Elsewhere, outside the competitive confines of the hallowed stadium, it meant closure. Not the kind you’d want to consider if lore and Keith Jackson mean anything.
No. 11 Penn State’s 35-21 win over No. 8 Utah marked the end of an era. This is the last time the traditional Rose Bowl fighters will meet for the foreseeable future. In fact, whether the Big Ten and the Pac-12 face off again in Pasadena will be a matter of coincidence.
After the 2023 season, the Rose Bowl will be a college football Elimination semi-final. So it’s only by chance that a Big Ten and/or Pac-12 team will play in the game. For different reasons, starting with the start of the 12-team playoffs in 2024, the same circumstances will apply.
“It made us realize … that we’re facing each other in the final ‘traditional Rose Bowl,'” Penn State athletic director Pat Kraft told CBS Sports. “For someone who grew up in the Midwest and the Big Ten, that’s it. He’s really the grandfather. So to have that kind of moment is surreal.”
The finality of this one, however, was palpable: it was definitely not your grandfather’s grandfather.
Ever since the Rose Bowl reluctantly joined the BCS in 1998, the relationship between tradition and evolution has been uneasy. Above all, Rose Bowl traditionalists enjoyed this Pac-8/10/12 game against the Big Ten. For 54 consecutive years (1947-2000), conference champions have gathered here.
That’s when BCS stepped in. To participate, the Rose Bowl, Big Ten, and Pac-12 agreed to give up their exclusivity to be part of college football’s first field-decided championship. Rose’s first shot in the BCS rotation came in 2002. Miami met Nebraska for the national championship. People from both schools returned from Pasadena saying the reception had been less than cordial.
This was further manifested the following year when Oklahoma played Washington State in front of just 87,000 fans, at less than 6,000 capacity. Since the college football playoffs began in 2014, the Big Ten and Pac-12 champions have met only once (2020, Ohio State vs. Washington).
In the 16 years leading up to 2014, the Rose Bowl won its traditional game 10 times. This ratio will decrease considerably in the future.
The problem came to a head late last year when the Rose Bowl reluctantly agreed with the CFP to the parameters for an expanded 12-year playoff in 2024. It was running out of leverage in a sport that has grown bigger than the first, oldest bowl. non-existence.
The Rose Bowl had been retained for playing on its traditional January 1st. 15 a.m. ET, kick-off time. We said no. From 2026, it will be filled with all the teams present in the system at the date and time that the CFP deems necessary.
“I’m not saying this with insults, but we’re not the Guaranteed Rate Bowl,” Tournament of Roses management committee chair Laura Farber said before the game. “I had to look up where that bowl was. We’ll always be the Rose Bowl.”
You wouldn’t get any arguments from the Nittany Lions. As a young administrator, Kraft — a former walker from Indiana — vowed never to set foot in the Rose Bowl unless the team he worked for was playing there.
“No, it’s too special,” Kraft told CBS Sports. “I have to earn it.”
On holiest ground, Kraft got his wish. It doesn’t matter that at the turn of the century Utah was in the Mountain West or that Big Ten flagships Michigan and Ohio State — both of which defeated Penn State — were eliminated from the CFP on Saturday.
But it was history with a melancholy side. For the first time since 2017, the match did not start under the sun.
Again, try telling Penn State that didn’t mean anything. The Nittany Lions won the game for the first time since 1995. It was their fifth Rose Bowl appearance since 1923.
On the 100th anniversary of that appearance, Penn State quarterback Sean Clifford recalled his first time on the West Coast as a fourth or fifth grader. His father surprised him with a trip to a soccer camp.
“I just remember really falling in love with football, especially the quarterback position,” Clifford said.
In the last game of his college career, Clifford was the Rose Bowl Offensive MVP, throwing for 279 yards and two touchdowns.
There is a lifeline for tradition here. After the 2024 and 2025 seasons, if the Pac-12 and/or Big Ten champions are ranked in the top four and earn a bye, the highest ranked of those two will be guaranteed a spot if the Rose Bowl is a quarter-final that year. . Had that been in place this season, Michigan would have played in Pasadena as the Big Ten champion against winners Ohio State and Kansas State.
“The Rose Bowl is iconic,” said CFP executive director Bill Hancock.
Monday was another reminder that he’s not exclusive.
By essentially giving the Rose Bowl an ultimatum, the CFP reinforced the stakeholders of what had become of a 12-team playoff. The games themselves matter more than when and where they are going to be played.
Farber was asked if the likes of an Alabama-Cincinnati playoff game in the Rose Bowl would matter to his grand tradition?
“That’s a really good question,” she said. “Do you know we’re in the Alabama fight song? … Tradition is what you make it. We also need to evolve. We need a balance between tradition and innovation.”
The rain couldn’t dampen the Penn State party. It foreshadowed that new era where the sun might not shine on the Rose Bowl all the time, in terms of a traditional game.
“I’m not trying to sound arrogant or anything,” Farber said. “But we are the ‘grandfather of all’.”
Yes, but for how long ?
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