The 2020 NFL Season Roundup | Rose Brawl

It’s difficult to pinpoint when exactly Pasadena’s perennially happy, proud, rousing Roses started to droop. Really it could have been at any point since Spring 2019. But to boosters, City Officials and the Tournament of Roses Association, December 19th icily etched the indignity of indignities upon their collective furrowed brows; December 19th was the day the beloved Rose Bowl was snatched from their 119 year grasp. For the first time ever, the Rose Bowl was to be hosted at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas (also home to the Dallas Cowbows). As with everything in the Covid-era, seismic upheaval to crisp College Football Playoff precision has left no apple cart unfussed with. The 24 hour period that preceded that now infamous announcement offers a fascinating behind-the-curtain peek into how mutually fortuitous partnerships can turn so sour, so stormy, so thorny, so quickly.

Way back in the waning days of the President Warren G. Harding’s administration, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses was battling an image problem. As the organizer of the “Rose Bowl Game” that pitted the #1 East and West college football teams against one another to crown a national champion, Pasadena Tournament of Roses officials were unhappy with host facility CalTech and its downtrodden, suffocating capacity of only 40,000 spectators (and that’s with unsightly temporary bleachers trucked in). And so, officials of the quasi-governmental organization drew up plans for a dreamy, state-of-the art stadium uptown in Arroyo Secco that easily doubled Game Day capacity. Adopting a radical bowl-shaped design that is now commonplace in sports today, the Rose Bowl would become only the 2nd venue at the time (shamelessly copying the Yale Bowl) to feature such a groundbreaking architectural flourish that furnished fans with unobstructed views of the playing field. From groundbreaking to Dedication in a head-spinning 10 months, the Rose Bowl debuted to instant fame in October 1922. The legendary Los Angeles Coliseum, 12 miles to the south, would follow in it footsteps opening 7 month later. Built at an original all-in cost of $272,000 ($4.2M today), the Rose Bowl has been expanded — tastefully — several times in the decades since and to this day maintains designer Myron Hunt’s signature vision. The growth and influence of the Rose Bowl (and the titular match it hosts) in its more than 100 year history has allowed the Tournament of Roses outsize influence in the world of modern collegiate sports. Revenues from the Rose Bowl fund its namesake and equally renown Rose Parade, a fabled American New Year’s Day tradition for generations. Broadcast rights fees to the parade and the game itself coupled with stadium game day revenues from ticketing, concessions, parking ( in addition to rent from UCLA for its home games) has mushroomed and muscled into a multi-million dollar enterprise nestled in the leafy ravine on the northwest edge of Pasadena. It’s a tightly choreographed, moneyed dance that has everyone cashing checks so long as the band keeps playing.

Well the music stopped and the band unexpectedly took down its sheet music, packed up its instruments and vanished into the ether 10 months ago, leaving a Covid rapid test in its wake. This left the City of Pasadena (Rose Bowl stadium owner), the Tournament of Roses (owner of the Rose Bowl name/trademark), the College Football Playoff Organization and Disney/ESPN nervously eyeing eachother in a fraught nervous frenemy standoff. Who would be the first to blink? Would a regular NCAA football Season be even feasible? Would conferences go along with NCAA’s best laid plans? What about the student athletes? And how can you pencil-out a Fall schedule with an ascendant pandemic still largely out of control? Well, the Autumn has for the most part been kind to college football perhaps the direct result of fortuitous timing. Though Covid still chewed mercilessly through NCAA teams (particularly in the South) and abruptly put an end to an already abbreviated Season last month, like a locomotive through a snowstorm, the money train must trundle forward. Enter the College Football Playoff organization that organizes the 6 New Year’s Day Bowl games and the National Championship game. The Rose Bowl is the most famous, most revered and most-watched of all the College Football Playoff Bowl games televised on New Year’s Day.

The first hint of problems to come arrived in July with the Tournament of Roses’ fateful decision to 86 its eponymous parade, wiping out millions in broadcast fees to say nothing of ticketing revenues. But Covid and the inability to prevent onlookers from flocking to a technically spectator-fee “digital” parade proved unhappy bed couples. They acted before LA County and the State of California could. With health authorities closely looking on, Tournament of Roses officials announced that in accordance with the County of Los Angeles, the 2021 Rose Bowl would be a fan-free event open to just the two then unchosen Teams and officiating staff. There was no grousing at the time; not a peep from Disney, not an utter of complaint from the College Football Playoff organization. AS far as the Tournament was concerned, it was all butterflies and blue skies.

Well the butterflies fluttered away suddenly and those blue skies turned stormy on December 18th. That was the day that Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly threatened to boycott the Rose Bowl (in his scheduled New Year’s Day matchup with Alabama) if families of the players could not attend. Frazzled, Tournament of Roses officials quickly pleaded with state of California to allow 400 family members to attend the outdoor game in a stadium that seated north of 91,000. AS quickly as the request was pushed up the flagpole, it was just a summarily rejected. That’s when then the Zoom calls began piling up in earnest. What began with friendly camaraderie among city, Tournament, Disney and the College Football Playoff collegially pushing for a mutually agreeable solution quickly deteriorated into shouting matches between attorneys and the invocation of sleepy passages of ironclad binding legal contracts. The hot heads laid the issue to rest for the evening and all parties awoke the next morning to astonished surprise. While the city of Pasadena, Disney and the Tournament of Roses banked some well-needed rest in an attempt to turn down the collective temperature, the College Football Playoff burned through the night with their legal beagles poring over its contract with Pasadena and the Tournament. They found only one escape hatch and steeled themselves to exploit it. With the continuity of their livelihood at stake, the College Football Playoff did the unthinkable and invoked the Force Majeure clause of their contract boldly snatching the game from Pasadena’s clutch and sending it 1000 miles away to Texas. That Notre Dame boycott threat was simply a bridge too far and the College Football Playoff just could not stomach gambling with “The Grandaddy of them All.” Pasadena and the Tournament of Roses reacted as you’d expect, apoplectic. Attorneys were summoned and a seminal lawsuit was drawn up with just 13 days before game day. The fiery issue at hand: the city and Tournament both jointly own the Rose Bowl trademark. The duo in turn sell the rights to the game to Disney and the College Football Playoff. While a case might technically be made to take the game, the College Football Playoff certainly could NOT take the name. And with less than two weeks to go, how can you even begin fathoming remarketing the Rose Bowl under another secondary, unworthy name? You can’t. Further, city and Tournament officials hollered about how Force Majeure could be invoked when the only thing that changed in the 9 month state spectator-free mandate was the preference and whim of Notre Dame’s head coach at the 11th hour. Check mate.

It’s said that nothing brings aggrieved parties together more than mutual hatred. And food. AND So over a lunch of In-N-Out double-double burgers, cold French fries and strawberry milkshakes, Pasadena, Tournament and College Football Playoff officials gathered once again around the bargaining table each fearing the loss of their raison d’etre. The bluffs were called and a shadowy deal was hammered out. The Rose Bowl would remain at the Rose Bowl once again beginning in 2022. For 2021, the Game would move to Arlington and the trademark would make the trip along with it. The College Football Playoff schedule would remain intact and ESPN would multicast the Notre Dame-Alabama matchup. The contract would soldier on to be executed as written. And a hush-hush $2M payment was hustled over to the Tournament of Roses which was then quickly handed to the city of Pasadena. It was a much-needed cash infusion that helped to defray the $11M bond payment on the Rose Bowl stadium; a payment normally covered easily by day-to-day revenues. You give a little, you get a little in all negotiations. Objectively speaking, College Football Playoff bent to the unreasonable tantrum of a middling team in contention and got their wish to take the show on the road. But to anyone who tuned in a week and a half ago, the aura and magic stayed behind in Pasadena. It was a Rose Bowl in name only. Gone were the noisy, kinetic machinations taking place in an iconic century-old venue. Absent were the majestic New Year’s Day brilliant blue skies, painted with cottony optic-white billowy clouds, the kind only manufactured in Hollywood. Nowhere to be found was California’s trademark soul-warming sunshine gauzily illuminating the dramatic Sierra Madre rockface. In the end, the Tournament of Roses has succinctly proven that a game by any other perceived name is NOT the same. The ruby red roses that once drooped in Pasadena stand proud at attention once more. And we can’t help but take notice and inhale their intoxicating fragrance of resolve.

[Alabama crushed Notre Dame, 31–14, at the Rose Bowl held in Texas on New Year’s Day]

Where have you been? I’ve missed YOU! The Commissioner took a few well-needed weeks off and in that time much has taken place: some good, some not so good, some expected, some unthinkable. There’s too much to digest since we last left off to do perishable headlines justice. SO We’ll just mourn and think about the Pittsburgh, Tennessee and Seattle what-coulda-beens. And really you can’t help but be amazed by the Cinderella team of 2020, The Cleve Brownies. Their sturdy victory over the one-time unbeaten Steelers on Sunday night is simply just one in a long series of focused gamelplay defying expectations that has helped them thunder into the post-season for the first time in two decades. The word unlikely comes to mind. So too justified. Well done, Cleve. Well done!