There’s no entity in college sports that mixes unbridled arrogance with a lack of self-awareness more consistently and persistently than the Rose Bowl. For decades, the Rose Bowl’s addiction to tradition has proudly impeded the progress of the sport’s postseason by blocking a playoff.

1. BREAKING
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Saints QB Drew Brees will reportedly return for Sunday's showdown against
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'The logic doesn't make
sense' — Why the Rose Bowl
should be moved this season
Pete Thamel
Fri, December 18, 2020, 10:10 AM GMT+8 · 6 min read
There’s no entity in college sports that mixes unbridled
arrogance with a lack of self-awareness more consistently
and persistently than the Rose Bowl. For decades, the Rose
Bowl’s addiction to tradition has proudly impeded the
progress of the sport’s postseason by blocking a playoff.
In most corners of the sports world, a parade and a sunset
packaged with a bowl game slowing the entire enterprise’s
progress would be mocked. In college football, it provided a
point of pride.
The Rose Bowl is accustomed to getting in the way and not
realizing it, long comfortable with a smokescreen of tradition
and basically bumping Ohio
State right out of this
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2. providing cover for its greed and collective ego. With the
COVID-19 pandemic raging in Southern California, playing the
Rose Bowl in Pasadena on Jan. 1 looms as an affront to
common sense and geographic realities.
The Rose Bowl shouldn’t be played in the stadium that bears
its name in 2020. The players who will likely play in it don’t
want to go there, in part because their parents won’t be
allowed to attend. Also, they are smart enough to realize
that flying 2,000 miles to play in a COVID hot zone isn’t very
smart. Three athletic directors with schools likely to play in
what’s expected to be the No. 2 vs. No. 3 College Football
Playoff semifinal – Ohio State, Notre Dame and Clemson –
are also cold to the idea of playing without families in the
stands.
“If it can’t be the Rose Bowl we all grew up with, does it make
sense to continue to have the game in Pasadena [this year]?”
asked Clemson’s Dan Radakovich. “That’s really what it boils
down to.”
The reasons to not play the Rose Bowl are simple. The teams
don’t want go that far. The players want their families at the
game, which is prohibited by government restrictions. And
most important, it’s not safe to go. Southern California is
under a stay-at-home order through Christmas and hospitals
are jammed.
The UCLA Bruins take on the Arizona Wildcats in an empty Rose Bowl in Pasadena
on Nov. 28, 2020. (Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via
Getty Images)
The only point in traversing the country to play in California,
where the other three bowl games have been canceled, is
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because the Rose Bowl overvalues its own role in the
sporting landscape. This a toxic mix of greed, risk and lack of
empathy. All for a sunset and a century-long streak.
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