In today’s world of college football, it feels like everything is rapidly changing. Between playoff expansion, bowl game opt outs, mass transfers, pay-for-play masquerading as NIL, and now even de facto trades, the sport looks completely different than it did even half a decade ago.
Throughout all of the changes, however, one thing about college football has remained constant: The Rose Bowl has always kicked off just after 2 p.m. Pacific time on New Year’s Day. However, even that is now changing. Earlier this week, the College Football Playoff announced that next year’s quarterfinal game at the Rose Bowl will be moved up by an hour to kick off just after 1 p.m. instead.
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The Rose Bowl’s start time has always created the perfect spectacle. Watching the game, viewers get to see California sunshine during the first half, the sunset over the San Gabriel Mountains during the third and fourth quarters, and the often thrilling finish being played under the lights. Having witnessed this both in-person and on television, there really is nothing like it in all of sports.
By moving the game up an hour, the CFP strips the Rose Bowl of much of the aura behind it. Instead of witnessing the sunset during the second half of the game, viewers will only get to see a portion of it at the very end. Instead of the most unique spectacle in all of sports, it will essentially just be another afternoon game in Southern California—something of which there are already plenty.
The reasoning for moving the game up an hour makes sense: They want to be able to play the quarterfinal game at the Sugar Bowl afterward and not have it kick off at 9 p.m. Eastern time. But there are plenty of other ways they could have adjusted for this instead—i.e. moving the Sugar Bowl to a different date or earlier in the day—without having to move the Grandaddy of Them All.
Is changing the start time of one football game by an hour the end of the world? Of course not. But far bigger than the game itself this represents yet another example of a time-honored college football tradition (the Rose Bowl and its sunset) getting kicked to the curb for the benefit of a man-made modern entity (the College Football Playoff).
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The Rose Bowl will always be incredibly special. They could play the game at 4 in the morning and that would still be the case.
But by moving its start time in order to help their television product, the College Football Playoff stripped the game of some of its aura and pageantry. And for that, shame on them.
This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: Rose Bowl start time change erodes another college football tradition
