Perspective Piece: Rose Bowl

More than a century since the first Rose Bowl was played, and 86 years since USC and Penn State last played in Pasadena, the Granddaddy of Them All is once again a game that Grandpa would truly love. When the Trojans and Nittany Lions strap on the pads this upcoming Thursday, college football will take a delicious trip back in time.

In the era of the Bowl Championship Series—which began in the 1998 season—non-championship bowl games have consistently and easily fallen off the national radar screen, losing the buzz and stature they enjoyed in the past. But if there’s ever been an exception to that 10-year rule, the upcoming clash between USC and Penn State fits the bill quite nicely.

All of the classic New Year’s Day bowls—when not offering the promise of a national championship or, at least, a slight whiff of controversy—have been wounded by the BCS, the latest systemic attempt to move beyond the old “poll and bowl” system that, while woefully ineffective at creating clear national champions, at least preserved college football’s other lifeblood: tradition.

In the days before the BCS was even a gleam in founder (and former SEC commissioner) Roy Kramer’s money-grubbing eye, old-time college football fans—in other words, your grandfather—could watch the Granddaddy, along with the Cotton, Sugar and Orange bowls on January 1. Yes, a great sport used to be supremely dysfunctional in its ability to crown a national champion, but at least Grandpa could count on four reliable bowl games to start the new year: a duel in Dallas, a headknocker in New Orleans, a night fight in Miami, and, of course, the famous pigskin passion play in Pasadena. Before the BCS came along, college football—though lacking in sophistication—at least gave comfort food to its fans. But when the computer formulas and microchips entered the picture in the 1998 season, the bowl landscape acquired a different and more impoverished feel.

The advent of a system that promised objectivity and clarity—but has instead delivered nothing but the same old controversies in eight of the BCS’s eleven seasons—has taken away the magic from the classic bowl games not connected to the championship chase. The Cotton Bowl, once a national title decider, is now a second-tier contest played either very early in the morning on New Year’s Day, or early in the afternoon on Jan. 2 (as is the case this season). In the very first year of the BCS, the 1999 Rose Bowl was treated by UCLA as a poor consolation prize, a contention proven when the Bruins served up a listless performance in a loss to a decided underdog from Wisconsin. The 2001 Sugar Bowl—which, in olden days, would have packed the Louisiana Superdome—unfolded before more than 10,000 empty seats, as Miami toppled Florida. The 2005 Fiesta Bowl, between Pittsburgh and Utah, proved to be an enormously unsatisfying on-field matchup and a similarly dull TV event. This season, the upcoming Orange Bowl between Cincinnati and Virginia Tech has precious little appeal beyond the local markets. Championship games are all the rage in the BCS era, but the other signature bowl games that used to capture the imagination of college football fans have lost their luster.

The Rose Bowl itself—though the sport’s most enduring bowl game played in an incomparably beautiful stadium on an artfully decorated field—has not been immune to the forces that have downgraded New Year’s Day (or early January) bowl classics in the BCS era. The quirks of the BCS system have taken away from the Big Ten-Pac-10 tie-in on some occasions (2002, 2003, 2005, 2006) while, in other instances, creating a Big Ten-Pac-10 matchup that did not involve the champions of both leagues (2007, 2008). The result has been the diminishment of college football’s unrivaled on-field spectacle, so much so that USC’s players—in the final weeks of this just-completed regular season—were openly hoping for Oregon State to win the Pac-10 and bump the Trojans to a Fiesta Bowl or Sugar Bowl fistfight against a team like Texas or Alabama. In this strange new college football world known as BCS-Ville, the tradition and stature of classic bowl games such as the Granddaddy have been the biggest victims of all.

This dark and complicated backdrop, as depressing as it is to contemplate for the college football lover, only serves to make the latest run for the Roses so deliciously delightful.

Unlike past years, the Rose Bowl will match the champions of the Big Ten and the Pac-10. Unlike past years, there won’t be a politically controversial selection such as Illinois (a third-place Big Ten team) playing in Pasadena. Unlike past years, a share of the national title—in the AP poll or otherwise—won’t be on the table in the Arroyo Seco. No, in 2009, the Granddaddy can boast a matchup that satisfies the college football purist while staying clear of BCS controversies. That crucial reality will enable the game’s major storyline to be appreciated and savored, instead of being obscured by questions about each team’s level of motivation.

The 2009 Rose Bowl, even before it starts, has already gained the leading men—and the outstanding achievements—that will give this Granddaddy a notably prominent place in the history books. In one corner, all the way from Pennsylvania, stands 82-year-old Joe Paterno, the first octogenarian to coach on New Year’s Day in the shadows of the San Gabriel Mountains. Anytime a game with the Rose Bowl’s unmatched pedigree can add another “first” to its record books, the college football world must take notice.

In the other corner, a quarter-century younger than JoePa, stands USC boss Pete Carroll, ruler of the Trojan Empire of College Football. Carroll will not attain the longevity Paterno has displayed in Happy Valley, but the 57-year-old is winning with such consistency and authority that a place in the College Football Hall of Fame has already been reserved for him.

Even if he loses to Penn State, and even if his USC dynasty were to unexpectedly crumble (not that it will—a “down year” for the program would come in the form of an 10-3 season, bowl game included), Carroll would still own six consecutive Pac-10 titles, not counting a 2002 share with Rose Bowl representative Washington State. Even if an unforeseen turn of events derailed his freight train in L.A., Carroll would still know that in the 2009 Rose Bowl, he brought a USC team to a fourth straight Granddaddy, and a fifth in seven years. This decade’s run of Trojan dominance has been so pronounced that it can rightfully stand alongside the eras of excellence produced by giants of USC’s storied past. Howard Jones and John McKay won more national titles than Carroll, but the past seven seasons of USC football—it could be argued—represent the best stretch of uninterrupted success in the life of a powerhouse program.

Jones went 65-7-3 in a seven-year span, from 1927 to 1933. From 1925 to ’33 (in an era when fewer games were played each season), the four-time national champion coach compiled a mark of 84-11-3. McKay, who also won four national titles at Southern California, didn’t manage to dominate on an annual basis. While he’d produce legendary teams in small clusters, the wise and witty coach wasn’t able to string together several supreme seasons. McKay’s best run at USC started in 1967 and ended in 1974. During those eight seasons, the Trojans amassed a record of 72-13-6. The program dominated in two three-year sequences (29-2-2 from ’67 through ’69, and 31-3-2 from ’72 through ’74), but was downright average in 1970 and ’71, as USC struggled to a 6-4-1 record in that puzzling pair of campaigns.

In the past seven years at USC, Pete Carroll’s record of 81-9 can go toe-to-toe with Howard Jones’s nine-year reign, and it slightly exceeds John McKay’s mark at the apex of the school’s glory years in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Yes, Notre Dame was just a wee bit better in McKay’s day—a major detail that should affect the way USC’s coaches are ranked and remembered—but in the short term, the reality of USC’s hard-luck years in 1970 and ’71 makes it quite fair to claim that the Trojans have had their greatest seven-year run under the man whose arrival, before the 2001 season, was met with a mixture of laughter and outrage by Angelino football fans and local journalists. Los Angeles—a city whose soul worships outrageous success, and whose culture reveres the masters of attractive, flashy, high-profile endeavors—is owned more by Carroll than anyone else. That sentence, more than any other, best explains the fullness of the golden era brought to Hollywood by the NFL refugee who has silenced his critics for all time.

Speaking of silencing the critics, Joseph Vincent Paterno—who, quite some time ago, had already achieved more than enough to orchestrate an eventual exit from Penn State on his own terms—endured withering scrutiny and intense heat in earlier parts of this decade, when the Nittany Lions didn’t crush opponents with the regularity once witnessed in State College. Despite a distinguished Penn State career dating back to 1950, and despite five unblemished seasons (only one of which netted a national title, in 1986), Paterno met more than a few vultures in the first several years of the 21st century. In a country where ageism is perhaps the most entrenched and corrosive bias of all (even more than sexism or racism at this point in America’s history), Paterno faced the reflexive, automatic claim of the screaming masses, the talk radio hordes bereft of any common sense: “The game has passed him by.” Rare is the senior citizen football coach who doesn’t have his knowledge tested, especially in an age when the teenage male is an ever more distracted species. In the cutthroat world of big-time college football—especially on the recruiting trail—there’s nothing like a little “old man” talk to cast doubt on an icon with more wins and more bowl victories than any other man who has ever walked on a Saturday sideline. Entering the 2008 season, the reality of Penn State football was as genuine as it was improbable: For far too many people, Joe Paterno—yes, Joe Paterno—had to prove himself anew.

Twelve games and one Big Ten championship later, perhaps the nattering nabobs of negativism can stay away for good, especially now that JoePa has signed a new three-year deal.

Because Paterno stayed the course, he’s been able to make a second trip to Pasadena (his first coming in 1995, when a Penn State juggernaut worthy of a split national title thumped Oregon by 18 points). The fact that he’ll face Carroll, of all people, offers particularly sweet vindication to the bespectacled legend, for a reason that transcends this game and its outcome. When Paterno faces the man 25 years his junior, he’ll know he can still compete in a profession that demands connecting with young people. When Paterno stares down the exuberant USC coach, who is viewed to be the best in college football at the tricky art of relating to the modern-day teenage athlete, the Penn State immortal will receive confirmation of the fact that his abilities are still considerable, his wisdom still visible, his leadership still powerful, his presence still formidable. In many ways, that’s victory enough for Penn State and Joe Paterno. Anyone with even the slightest appreciation of the difficulty of coaching would unhesitatingly agree with that statement. Count Pete Carroll as a member of that group.

This awesome matchup of coaching titans is special in so many ways. Paterno v. Carroll is a matchup of abundant and fascinating contrasts: age against youth, the enduring fixture against the rapidly ascendant superstar, the college-town sage against the big-city motivational guru, the buttoned-down shirt-and-tie funder of educational projects against the informal outside-the-box prankster who visits L.A.’s gang-ravaged projects in the middle of the night.

But while JoePa and Carroll offer stark methodological differences that exist on the surface, what’s far more amazing about the two men is the nature of the similarities they share. Both men, for all the unique elements of their respective personal biographies, are cut from the same football cloth.

Paterno and Carroll both manage to connect with their players. Both coaches emphasize defense and the billy-basic fundamentals of the game. Both coaches like to dominate in football’s most elemental confrontations, and would be quite happy to use minimalist offensive formations and pound the living daylights out of their opponent. Both coaches, especially Carroll, have preferred to steer clear of exotic and funky offensive sets in an age set afire by the likes of Mike Leach, Urban Meyer, and Paul Johnson.

And, last but definitely not least, both coaches just know how to win and win consistently... especially on New Year’s Day.

Yes, the seven-year run produced by Pete Carroll at USC could be the best stretch of Trojan football ever produced. With that said, however, Paterno fashioned his own mosaic of mastery when his 43-year head coaching career was just getting off the ground.

Two years after becoming Penn State’s head man in 1966 (following 15 years as an assistant), Paterno initiated a dance with dominance that eerily matches Carroll’s conquests. From 1968 through 1974, Paterno’s Penn State teams lost the same amount of games Carroll’s USC teams have dropped since 2002: nine. If Marilyn Monroe had a seven-year itch, Joe Paterno became seven years rich from ’68 through ’74. His teams made six of those New Year’s Day bowls—you know, the ones that mattered a lot more before the BCS era came along, even when the national title didn’t hang in the balance. Even more impressively, Paterno won five of those six showdowns… just as Carroll has done to date in his stay at USC. The Trojans are 5-1 in BCS bowls, which has given Carroll a deserved reputation as the coach you just don’t want to play with three or more weeks to prepare.

Hmmm… sound familiar, Penn State fans? It should, because Paterno enjoyed that same exact reputation for many years. The man with 23 bowl wins (against 10 losses with one tie) outfoxed most of the other big-name coaches who opposed him in on a grand New Year’s Day stage: Missouri’s Dan Devine (who later excelled at Notre Dame and beat Paterno in the 1976 Gator Bowl); Texas’s Darrell Royal; LSU’s Charlie McClendon; Baylor’s Grant Teaff; Ohio State’s Earle Bruce; USC’s John Robinson; Georgia’s Vince Dooley; Miami’s Jimmy Johnson; Tennessee’s Johnny Majors (once) and Phillip Fulmer (twice); and Florida State’s Bobby Bowden (who beat Paterno in a less significant bowl meeting) were all defeated by Paterno in high-stakes showdowns.

Yes, Paterno grabbed some bowl wins in lower-tier games such as the Alamo, Liberty and Outback, but when the calendar turns to January 1, JoePa usually walks off the field a winner. Only Alabama’s Bear Bryant beat Paterno at least twice in a bowl game without suffering a defeat. Contemplate the magnitude of that achievement: In Paterno’s 34 bowl games, only one man—the man regarded as the best coach who ever lived—has beaten JoePa twice without a loss of his own. That fact puts Paterno in very rarified air… air that Pete Carroll could breathe if he stays at USC for another decade.

So much has been said about Joe Paterno and Pete Carroll, in this and the many other articles being produced for the 2009 Rose Bowl. Yet, with their historic confrontation just a few days away, one has the sense that these coaching giants could be linked in many other equally fascinating ways. At some point, though, the game has to be played, so let’s just say that both men have been making bowl-game magic for quite some time: Carroll in a burst of awesome fury this decade, Paterno with remarkable consistency over four decades, particularly in the early 1970s, the early 1980s, and in a 9-2 run for JoePa over the course of his last 11 bowls.

What was old has become new and youthful again. In a battle of champions that nature intended, Pete Carroll and Joe Paterno—carrying the banners for the Pac-10 and Big Ten—will defy the BCS era and participate in a Pasadena pageant that will produce history regardless of the final outcome. These are not the best teams the two men have fielded in their careers, but Carroll and Paterno are reason enough to treat this Rose Bowl the way your grandfather once did: as a big deal, national title be damned.

If there’s one regret Thursday’s game might produce, it will be only this: that Paterno and Penn State didn’t join the Big Ten in the late 1960s. Why? The answer is simple yet stunning: If JoePa had made his move then, Penn State and USC would have faced off in a Rose Bowl or three, with Paterno staring down John McKay, quite possibly for the national title in 1974. How much better would this latest Penn State-USC matchup have been if Paterno-Carroll had been preceded by Paterno-McKay, 35 to 40 years before?

Oh, well, you can’t have it all. The 2009 Rose Bowl—for a non-BCS championship game—has made New Year’s Day afternoon relevant again. That’s no small thing for a game, a stage, and a sport that need to return to their roots. Pete Carroll and Joe Paterno have already given a great gift to all people who deeply love and care about this thing called college football.