The Rose Bowl is dead. Humanity will soon follow

The Rose Bowl game, an annual sports spectacle embodying cherished California conceptions of beauty and inclusion, is dead.

It was 121 years old.

The cause of death was our winner-take-all culture.

In Pasadena, your columnist’s hometown, city officials remained in denial, claiming that the Rose Bowl was very much alive. After all, the old stadium town is still called the “Rose Bowl” and will host college football playoffs in the future.

But the Rose Bowl itself — a postseason football game pitting top university teams from the West (Pac-12) and East (Big Ten) — is no more. Ever-changing California has lost a reassuring New Year’s tradition.

Once considered cutting-edge — the game was the first sporting event broadcast on transcontinental radio — the Rose Bowl represented values so old-fashioned that they now seem foreign in our angry age.

Today, Americans are bitterly divided by politics, region, and identity. Our business and government systems spread division through competitions that identify one winner, making everyone else a loser.

The Rose Bowl incubated a different tradition — of college football bowl games that brought together Americans from different regions. This bowl system, headlined by the Rose Bowl, produced many winners, rather than just one. Champions of the Rose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, and the Orange Bowl could each claim a share of a mythical national championship.

It was like a Scandinavian election, where four emerge as winners.

But such democratic-minded spirit couldn’t long survive in our cutthroat country. Television executives and football-playing universities believed they could draw bigger audiences — and make more money — with a college football playoff system.

The Rose Bowl and other bowls resisted a playoff for decades. But in the 21st century, the pressure for a playoff grew. President Obama, taking time from building systems of mass surveillance and deportation, even lobbied for a winner-take-all national football playoff, arguing: "If you've got a bunch of teams who play throughout the season, and many of them have one loss or two losses, there's no clear decisive winner.”

In 2014, the Rose Bowl surrendered, and agreed to become part of the playoff system. The Rose Bowl negotiated a deal preserving its East-West tradition in most years, but every third year, it would instead host a playoff semi-final.

Sadly, that compromise only delayed the game’s death.

In 2022, television companies and college football conferences moved to expand the playoffs from four teams to 12 to make more money. The Rose Bowl resisted this push, but had little leverage.

So the Rose Bowl signed its own death warrant this fall — giving up not only its traditional East–West matchup, but also its traditional time, on the afternoon of New Year’s Day. Instead, the Rose Bowl will be just another playoff game.

In Pasadena, city leaders have shamelessly spun the death of their traditional game as a victory. More tourists might visit our hometown because of greater excitement around a playoff, they’ve said. But that’s nonsense. Pasadena needed to keep a college football game, and related revenues, to support the Rose Parade.

Now, reflecting on the death of the Rose Bowl, you may think your columnist has lost perspective about his hometown tradition. It’s only a game, right?

But it is you, the sanguine, who have lost perspective.

I read the Rose Bowl’s loss through French philosopher Jean-Pierre Dupuy, a longtime Stanford professor.

Dupuy is a self-described “enlightened doomsayer,” a philosopher of apocalypse. He argues that “humanity is on a suicidal course, headed straight for catastrophe.” Why? Because we don’t respect sacred things. We blow through limits. In so doing, we produce constant catastrophes.

The Rose Bowl game was a sacred ritual that inspired togetherness. Its death takes us one step closer to the end of the world.

A memorial service will be held January 2, 2023 — the final Rose Bowl game with a Pac 12-Big Ten matchup. Don’t send flowers — the Rose Parade already has thousands of them.

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: The Rose Bowl is dead. Humanity will soon follow