Tramel's ScissorTales: Big 12 Conference expansion isn't what killed Rose Bowl tradition
With the apparent demise of the Pac-12, everyone from Mike Gundy to readers have asked what now becomes of the Rose Bowl and its beloved tradition of matching the Big Ten champion vs. the Pac-12 champ.
The answer is, the Rose Bowl’s tradition was slain not by the Big 12 defections of Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah, but by the expanded College Football Playoff.
The Rose Bowl this season will host a semifinal game of the final four-team playoff. The next two seasons, as the playoff expands to 12 teams, the Rose Bowl will host quarterfinals.
It’s expected that the bowl games will remain part of the playoff after the 2026 season.
But there is one avenue to the Rose Bowl’s previous situation. Some have politicked for the playoff to be fully campus-based.
That would be the only potential preservation of the Big Ten/Pac-12 Rose Bowl model. If the bowls no longer are part of the playoff, a game like the Rose could match the best teams from each of the Big Ten and the Pac that didn’t make the playoff. That’s provided the Pac survives.
Without a Pac-12 — or without a Pac-12 the Rose Bowl deems acceptable — the Rose could look to the Big 12 and perhaps land one of its Pac-12 expatriates. Or the Rose could sign up the SEC to begin a new tradition. Or most likely, the Rose Bowl could reserve both of its berths for the Big Ten, filling one with UCLA, Southern Cal, Washington or Oregon, and the other with a legacy Big Ten member.
I wouldn’t put it past them.
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Only SEC stays state-connected
I’m not particularly fond of all the conference realignment that has overtaken college football in recent years. But I do find it fascinating.
Conference realignment combines two of my favorite subjects. College football and geography.
Geography has gone the way of the wind in realignment, of course. The quaint notion of contiguous states once was a college hallmark. No longer.
Makes you appreciate the Southeastern Conference. Love or hate the SEC, give Greg Sankey’s conglomeration credit. It believes in geography.
OU joins the SEC next July. Oklahoma borders three SEC states (Texas, Arkansas, Missouri). Heck, every SEC state except South Carolina borders at least two other states. South Carolina borders only Georgia among SEC states.
Sankey’s oft-stated desire to keep the SEC tied together geographically now knows few binds. The SEC could expand with the likes of Notre Dame, Ohio State, North Carolina, Virginia Tech, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas State, Colorado and New Mexico, while maintaining its border-state edict.
The Atlantic Coast Conference gives geography the old college try. Only one ACC football school, Louisville, is in a state that doesn’t border the Atlantic Ocean.
If the ACC added a team from West Virginia or Ohio, the league would be fully continguous. Yep, Cincinnati or West Virginia would bridge Kentucky (Louisville) with Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh) make the ACC totally mainland.
The Big Ten seems to have gone sideways on geography, stretching the league from Los Angeles to Piscataway, New Jersey; from Seattle to College Park, Maryland.
The American West is a big piece of real estate. But it comes with big states. All the Big Ten needs to stretch uninterrupted from sea to shining sea is add Wyoming and Boise State. You could look it up.
The late, great Pac-12 had no island states, but now it has only four members going past this coming school year, and if the Pac survives, one of its first additions will be Southern Methodist. Texas is a big place; it’s only 195 miles from El Paso to San Simon, Arizona. But alas, no Arizona school is left in the Pac-12.
And the Big 12’s recent additions have created a state bridge back to its mainland. Colorado connects Utah and Brigham Young back to Kansas and Oklahoma, and Arizona borders both Utah and Colorado.
But still, the Big 12 has serious geographic holes. You know how many more schools the conference would have to add to all be border-connected? Four – and they’d have to come from Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and either Alabama or Georgia.
We’ve talked about West Virginia’s island for a decade, but at least WVU now has Cincinnati now. Central Florida has no one. The Big 12 would need three states to get up to West Virginia from Florida, and if one of the states was Kentucky, then Missouri would finish the job (and even make Iowa State connected again).
Fun fact: a sliver of the Missouri border abuts Kentucky. Just a few miles of the Mississippi River. But if in 2011 the Big 12 had kept Missouri while adding Louisville and West Virginia to replace Nebraska and Colorado, the conference would have been state-continguous.
But heck, not even the ultra-stable Mid-American Conference is contiguous. You have to drive through a little bit of Pennsylvania to get from Ohio to New York, the latter the home state of Buffalo.
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The List: Utah’s athletic programs
Utah announced over the weekend that it will join the Big 12 in 2024. The Utes sponsor 18 varsity sports (not counting women’s indoor track).
Here is how the Utes’ sports rank in status:
1. Skiing: Utah has won the NCAA combined (men and women) championship 14 times, including each of the last three years.
2. Women’s gymnastics: A powerhouse, the Red Rocks, as they are nicknamed, have won nine NCAA championships and made the Super Six 32 times. Utah hasn’t won an NCAA gymnastics title since 1995 but has placed third nationally each of the last three years.
3. Football: The Utes have been building a quality program for almost 20 years. Utah has won the last two Pac-12 Championship Games and have tremendous stability under 19-year head coach Kyle Whittingham.
4. Women’s volleyball: The Utes have been a perennial top-25 team under 34-year coach Beth Launiere.
5. Softball: The Utes reached the Women’s College World Series in 2023, 29 years after their previous appearance, in 1994.
6. Women’s basketball: The Utes were frequent NCAA Tournament qualifiers before joining the Pac-12. In their first 10 seasons in the Pac, Utah didn’t reach the NCAAs or post a winning Pac-12 record. But Utah has done both each of the last two years, including a No. 2 seed and a Sweet 16 appearance in 2023.
7. Women’s cross country: The Utes have begun to make a mark in the sport, making four of the last nine NCAA Championships, after previously never qualifying.
8. Men’s tennis: The Utes are starting to compete – they have won a match in each of the last two NCAA Championships.
9. Men’s golf: The Utes reached the 2022 NCAA Championships, their first NCAA berth since 1988.
10. Women’s soccer: The Utes have made six NCAA Tournaments, most recently in 2016.
11. Baseball: The Utes have made just two NCAA Tournaments since 1960. One was in 2009, out of the Mountain West, and the other was 2016, when Utah finished first in the Pac-12 standings.
12. Men’s basketball: The Utes have been to four Final Fours and won the 1944 NCAA title. But only one of those Final Fours (1998) have come since 1966. Utah’s last NCAA Tournament appearance was 2016, and the Utes are a combined 29-48 in Pac-12 Conference play the last four years.
13. Women’s swimming: The Utes never have finished in the upper division of the Pac-12.
14. Women’s track: The Utes haven’t done much; in only five seasons has Utah qualified an individual for the NCAAs.
15. Men’s lacrosse: The Utes became a Division I program in 2019 and compete in the Atlantic Sun (ASUN) Conference, which they’ve won each of the last two years.
16. Women’s tennis: The Utes have been mostly bottom dwellers in the Pac-12.
17. Men’s swimming: The Utes have been consistent last-place finishers in the Pac-12 swim meets.
18. Women’s beach volleyball: The six-year program hasn’t done much yet. For obvious reasons.
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Mailbag: More Big 12 travel questions
The Big Ten’s expansion with Oregon and Washington actually cuts down on severe travel for the conference.
When it was just Southern Cal and UCLA on the Big Ten’s western front, each was scheduled for four trips back east every year, with four legacy Big Ten squads headed to Los Angeles.
With UW and Oregon joining the Big Ten, those numbers should go down a little each way, to three per year.
But still.
Jon: “What do you think the quality of life is going to be for the Washington-Oregon-USC-UCLA-Rutgers-Maryland equipment managers? Just punching in Piscataway (New Jersey) to Seattle, it says it’s a 41-hour drive (would assume more in a big tractor-trailer and possible weather conditions). An 82-hour round trip drive for a three-hour football game? No thanks.”
Tramel: I want no part of it, but some people like to drive trucks on the open road.
Legacy Big Ten schools will average about 0.86 trips per season out West, which means six every seven years. Big Ten teams have been scheduling out West for decades, so no huge change.
But three cross-country trips a year would be taxing on the truck drivers. I suppose the schools could invest in a duplicate truck, full of everything the other truck has, and keep it parked in Peoria, Illinois.
Or a school could suck it up and just drive it all. It’s not like the old Pac-12 road trips were all that close, either.
It’s 1,136 miles from Seattle to Los Angeles. So the problem would be back-to-back road trips. Washington at UCLA, followed by Washington at Purdue, is almost as problematic as Washington back east for two straight weeks.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Big 12 Conference expansion isn't what killed Rose Bowl tradition
