You want to talk name, image and likeness?
There’s nothing more representative of college football than the Rose Bowl game.
In a shape-shifting sport, one persistently rounding into a junior version of the NFL, the tradition of the Rose Bowl is a sacred point of stability. For decades it was a destination as opposed to a whistle stop on the way to a national championship.
Why not look at this sun-splashed sanctuary the way the British Open has St. Andrews in the rotation of courses? Put a national championship here every five years. The Old Course is the birthplace of golf, and this is the birthplace of the “bowl” game, a reference to the shape of this very venue.
If the Rose Bowl is a church, then Joel Klatt is a preacher.
“This should be the national championship every single year,” said Klatt, the former Colorado quarterback turned Fox analyst. “Something that college football is missing that every other sport has is a destination, something that is a culmination of the sport that everybody points to and says, ‘That’s what we want. That’s where we want to go.’ The NFL has the Super Bowl and that can move around.
“But as we morph into the idea of old college football and new college football, trying to find the parts of old college football that can become special in new college football is very important. The Rose Bowl game could be our Super Bowl.”
It felt that way Wednesday, with half the bowl bathed in Oregon green and half in Ohio State red. Looming over the stadium’s north rim, the majestic San Gabriel mountains.
“You don’t get this anywhere,” said legendary Ohio State running back Archie Griffin, the only two-time Heisman Trophy winner and someone who made four consecutive trips to the Rose Bowl from 1972 to 1975.
Looking down to the field from a suite before kickoff, Griffin pondered making the Rose Bowl a regular host of national championship games. He might live in Ohio, but in a sense he’s a year-round resident of this stadium, with a bronze statue of him in front.
“Fans would love to come out here,” he said. “I don’t know how you wouldn’t. I’m not sure what’s behind the decision making and how that can happen, but you’ve got to give it very serious consideration.”
Like everything in the sport — from multimillion-dollar NIL deals to the transfer portal to the dissolution and reforming of conferences — the College Football Playoff is in figure-it-out mode. This is the first year of the new format, expanded from four schools to 12.
Oregon-Ohio State was a quarterfinal game, with the semifinals Jan. 9 and 10 at the homes of the Miami Dolphins and Dallas Cowboys, and the national championship Jan. 20 on the Atlanta Falcons’ field.
Yes, some might refer to those as the Orange, Cotton and Peach bowls, but this whole process has distinct NFL overtones.
It might be the familiar Buckeyes in the Rose Bowl, but so much about new college football is keeping eyes on the bucks.
All the more reason college football needs to honor its past and lean into what makes it special.
Klatt is a proponent of starting the season a week earlier, with the Army-Navy game. The season would culminate with the championship game at the Rose Bowl, instead of drifting into January in the shadow of the NFL playoffs.
“Playing a national championship on a Monday night on Jan. 20 is one of the most asinine things I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said. “College football is played on Saturdays or on Jan. 1. That’s something that we can retain as unique and special about our sport.”
As is the case with the sport it hosts, the Rose Bowl is evolving. In the next five years, the 102-year-old stadium is going to undergo significant alterations intended to improve fan experience while retaining the venue’s National Historic Landmark status. That includes creating a swanky field club behind the south end zone, the first ground-level premium seating in the stadium’s history.
“I firmly believe that this is the most special sporting event that we have in our country,” Klatt said. “This is the best football venue we have in our country. Why not make it the national championship?”
Like a running back tucking away the football, the CFP can carve a new path forward, but it should put a vice-like grip on what made fans fall in love with the sport in the first place.
