XPost: talk.politics.guns, dumb.ass.democrats.america.hating.assholes, democrats.are.dipshits
XPost: ca.politics
In article <
XnsAD44BAAB46C1Ffdsa@95.216.243.224>
assholes <
assholes@asu.edu> wrote:
Of course Democrats are greedy socialist assholes. The Rednecks beat them this time though.
The causes of death were two chronic California diseases greed
and our winner-take-all culture
The Rose Bowl game, an annual sports spectacle embodying
cherished California conceptions of beauty and inclusion, is
dead.
It was 121 years old.
The causes of death were two chronic California diseases greed
and our winner-take-all culture.
In Pasadena, the hometown of your columnist, city and game
officials remained in denial, claiming that the Rose Bowl was
very much alive. They noted that the old stadium in the Arroyo
Seco will continue to be called Rose Bowl and will host
college football playoffs for many years to come.
But the Rose Bowl itself a post-season football game pitting
top teams from the West (Pac-12) and East (Big Ten) is no
more. Ever-changing California has lost a rare and reassuringly
stable New Years tradition.
The Rose Bowl was known as the granddaddy of them all because,
when first played by the University of Michigan and Stanford on
January 1, 1902, it was the first postseason college football
bowl game.
Once considered cutting-edge for example, the game was the
occasion for the first transcontinental radio broadcast of a
sporting event the Rose Bowl came to represent values so old-
fashioned that they now seem counter-cultural, even foreign, in
our angry and nationalist age.
Today, Americans are bitterly divided by politics, region, and
various forms of identity. To make things worse, our systems, in
everything from education to business to politics, spread
division through competitions that identify an uber-winner,
making everyone else a loser.
The Rose Bowl incubated a different tradition, inspiring the
creation of college football bowl games that brought together
Americans from different regions. This system of bowls,
headlined by the Rose Bowl, formed a college football system
that produced many winners, rather than just one.
Champions of the Rose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, the Orange Bowl and
so on, each of which could claim their own share of a mythical
national championship. It was like one of those Scandinavian
elections, where four or five parties emerge as winners, and
take seats in a coalition government.
But such a unifying and democratic-minded spirit couldnt long
survive in our cutthroat country.
Greed fueled the downfall of the Rose Bowl and its fellow bowls.
Television executives and football-playing universities believed
they could draw bigger audiencesand make more moneyby
establishing 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 from
university teams, TV networks, and sports journalistsgrew. The
leading American politician of this century, Barack Obama, even
campaigned on a football playoff, making a winner-should-take-
all argument: If youve got a bunch of teams who play
throughout the season, and many of them have one loss or two
losses, theres no clear decisive winner.
Once president, Obama even took time from other efforts to
increase top-down national authoritylike mass surveillance and
mass deportation to lobby publicly for a national playoff
system.
In 2014, the Rose Bowl, the last and strongest holdout against a
playoff, surrendered, and agreed to become part of the playoff
system. The Rose Bowl negotiated a deal that preserved its East-
West tradition in part; most years, it could pit a Pac-12 and
Big Ten champion, but every third year, it would instead host
the semifinal of a four-team playoff.
Sadly, that compromise couldnt save the game. It only delayed,
by a few years, the Rose Bowls death.
In 2022, television companies and college football conferences
moved to expand the playoffs from four teams to 12. This
appealed to the Pac 12, Big Ten and other conferencesmore of
their universities would make the playoff, and make more money,
through television rights fees, for doing so.
The Rose Bowl resisted this push, but had little leverage. So
the Rose Bowl signed its own death warrant this fallgiving up
not only its traditional EastWest matchup, but also its
traditional time, on the afternoon of New Years Day (except in
years when Jan. 1 falls on Sunday, and the game shifts to Jan.
2). Instead, the Rose Bowl will be one of the playoff games,
likely a quarterfinal.
In Pasadena, game officials and city leaders have shamelessly
spun the death of their traditional game as some kind of
victory. More tourists might come to our hometown because of
greater excitement around a playoff, theyve said. But thats
nonsense. Pasadena needed to keep a college football game,
because it needs the revenues from the broadcast to help fund
the Rose Parade. If that meant jettisoning the Rose Bowl in
favor of hosting a playoff quarterfinalas seems likelythey
were willing to do it.
Now, reflecting on the death of the Rose Bowl, some of you may
think that your columnist has lost perspective when it comes to
his hometown tradition. Its only a game, right?
But it is you, the sanguine, who have lost perspective.
I read the loss of the Rose Bowl through the work of the French
philosopher Jean-Pierre Dupuy, a longtime Stanford professor and
a friend and mentor to former Gov. Jerry Brown.
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 dont respect
the sacred things. We blow through limits. And, in doing so, we
produce constant calamities and catastrophes, and unleash
violence.
The Rose Bowl game is one such sacred ritual that inspired
togetherness. Its death takes us one step closer to the end of
the world.
A memorial service for the Rose Bowl will be held the afternoon
of January 2, 2023. It will be the final Rose Bowl game with a
traditional Pac 12-Big Ten matchup, pitting Penn State and the
University of Utah. There is no need to send flowersthe Rose
Parade always has thousands of them.
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zcalo
Public Square.
Thank homosexuals and the Democrats who support them.
<
https://www.pressenterprise.com/2022/12/24/an-obituary-for-the- rose-bowl-as-we-know-it/>
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