Rose Bowl- ‘The logic doesn’t make sense’.
With the COVID-19 pandemic risks in Southern California, playing the Rose Bowl in Pasadena on Jan. 1 is in question.
The following written content by Pete Thamel
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 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. Read more from Yahoo! Sports.
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