Gophers in Rose Bowl, slim chance in my lifetime

norman dale

Lord, grant me one Rose Bowl
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Want to see the Gophers play in the the Rose Bowl game? Well, pray to the football gods but I think this will be the last year we will have a remote chance of playing in the Grandaddy of Them All!

With the recent announcement of the forthcoming FBS 12 team playoff setup the powers that be will not wait beyond 2023 to change the format. So, the 2021 and 2022 seasons will see the bowl alignments stay as they are now. Big 10 champion will automatically qualify for the Rose Bowl unless they are part of the 4-team playoff. As we've seen the recent past even a loss in the Big 10 Championship game will send a team to Pasadena if the eventual champion goes to the playoffs.

Best case scenario in 2023 and beyond is that the Rose Bowl hosts either one of the semi-final games or the national championship game itself. That would mean the Gophers would need to win a minimum of the one playoff game if they were a top 4 team, and more likely win 2 games (one of which could be at a top 4 home field) if they were an at-large selection.

Now where the first round of the playoff games are going to be played are most assuredly going to be at the top seeded teams home field. The quarterfinals...not yet set in stone. Maybe at the higher seeds home field, or a pre-determined neutral site, or wrapped up in the current bowl structure. Regardless of those logistics the Rose Bowl is going to host whatever playoff game that happens to fall on Jan 1 or Jan 2 of any given year without any tie-in to conference affiliation.

To wrap it back around to the Gophers I look the Rose Bowl as an possibility for only the next 2 seasons. Beyond that is only unpredictability unless they become a national powerhouse.

Given what the team has coming back for this year and the predicted losses next year on the offensive and defensive lines....it's 2021 or bust. For those of you dreaming of seeing the right shade of maroon painted in the Rose Bowl endzone in late December or watching the sunset over the Gabriel Mountains while sitting at the Rose Bowl game watching the Gophers play, this is your last chance.
 


Here's the deal... once the Rose Bowl wasn't an automatic for the obvious B1G champ (and it hasn't been for a while) ... then it already wasn't the old Rose Bowl anymore.

I get the historical association and if the stars were to align that's nice... bet even then it's not the same Rose Bowl / hasn't been for a long time.
 

The advantage to being an old fart is at least I've seen the Gophers in a Rose Bowl.

And here's how it's going to work:

While everybody's looking up at Ohio State, PJ's gonna have the Gophers tunneling out of site and all of the sudden poof! we pop up in the middle of the Rose Bowl like Mr. Gopher in Caddyshack, shake off the dirt, and start dancing. And I hope we go full banana, too. It will be most appropriate to have those big Goldie faces from the yellow helmets.

And then I can pass on with a smile on my face.
 

The advantage to being an old fart is at least I've seen the Gophers in a Rose Bowl.

And here's how it's going to work:

While everybody's looking up at Ohio State, PJ's gonna have the Gophers tunneling out of site and all of the sudden poof! we pop up in the middle of the Rose Bowl like Mr. Gopher in Caddyshack, shake off the dirt, and start dancing. And I hope we go full banana, too. It will be most appropriate to have those big Goldie faces from the yellow helmets.

And then I can pass on with a smile on my face.
I have said it many times we will be there when we least expect it. The Rosebowl is the bowl everyone would like to play in no matter what.
 


Here's the deal... once the Rose Bowl wasn't an automatic for the obvious B1G champ (and it hasn't been for a while) ... then it already wasn't the old Rose Bowl anymore.

I get the historical association and if the stars were to align that's nice... bet even then it's not the same Rose Bowl / hasn't been for a long time.
Yeah, once the changed the old format the old significance of trying to get to Pasadena changed. Still would be awesome to get a chance to play there again at some point but it is no longer the sole end goal for the best in the Big Ten and Pac 12 the way it used to be.
 

Who cares what the format is. It’s still the Rose Bowl. It’s about the band marching down Colorado Avenue, and playing in the Rose Bowl stadium and on that field. That’s it! If I’m lucky enough to see the Gophers play there, do you think I’ll be wondering what the format was that allowed the Gophers to be there. That’s the deal.
 

I was just thinking of this the other day when word of potential playoff changes came out. It's likely the Rose Bowl will just become another semi-final game for the tournament. I'm disappointed the years where the Rose Bowl has been part of the CFP, as it just loses some of that "specialness".
 

Here's the deal... once the Rose Bowl wasn't an automatic for the obvious B1G champ (and it hasn't been for a while) ... then it already wasn't the old Rose Bowl anymore.

I get the historical association and if the stars were to align that's nice... bet even then it's not the same Rose Bowl / hasn't been for a long time.
Respectfully disagree.
 



That f'n first quarter of the Iowa game...UGH!!!!!!!!!!! If we had actually shown up that quarter we very well could have won, would have been in Pasadena. And now here we are...

Sigh-U-Mah.

Go Gophers!!
First half if we're being totally honest.
 

That f'n first quarter of the Iowa game...UGH!!!!!!!!!!! If we had actually shown up that quarter we very well could have won, would have been in Pasadena. And now here we are...

Sigh-U-Mah.

Go Gophers!!
That early part of the Iowa Game (and the whole game) was a real gut punch.

My quest to chase history started after the PSU game and I had high hopes for that bright day in Iowa City, it wasn't a 2003 style beat down (28-52) but a gut punch for sure. I blame those awful Mississippi State uniforms someone decided to trot out that day. In reality the QB played as good as I ever saw him play, and the RB Goodson is the real deal.

I finally got to Northwestern the next game, and it felt good to win down there, and I remember watching the late afternoon Purdue game at Wisconsin back at the crappy "boutique" hotel in Lincoln Park, hoping in vain that somehow Purdue could win to make the Gophers West Champions, regardless of the next week.

Losing to Wisconsin and winning the West through a Purdue win would have been a bad feeling, but I would have taken it as it would have meant that elusive Rose Bowl that many chased for going on 60 years. Many of those ran out of time and are no longer with us.

I'd hate to thing that many of us will also never see a Rose Bowl before the dirt nap. At least we will have the Rose Bowl turf, thank you Tim Brewster for that.
 


That is my strongest objection to an expanded championship schedule.
Given that tOSU's dominance is not going to end soon means that when they make the final four it opens up the possibility of one of the also rans to get to the Rose Bowl.
I see no need for the possible expansion.
Can anyone show that over the years of the four team schedule that a team who had a very good chance of beating the eventual champion was unfairly passed over?
 



Is it the Rose Bowl, or the Gophers winning the Big Ten in football?

Like others have said there’s been scenarios for almost 20 years where the conference champ didn’t play in Pasadena and scenarios where a runner up did.

In modern times, to me, it’s always been more about winning the Big Ten (and maybe making CFP/BCS in process) than specifically the Rose Bowl.
 

Is it the Rose Bowl, or the Gophers winning the Big Ten in football?

Like others have said there’s been scenarios for almost 20 years where the conference champ didn’t play in Pasadena and scenarios where a runner up did.

In modern times, to me, it’s always been more about winning the Big Ten (and maybe making CFP/BCS in process) than specifically the Rose Bowl.

Just get to Pasadena.............somehow. According to my sundial, my time is running short
 

For people born in or after the Reagan administration, the Rose Bowl would still be cool but for me, it lost is aura when 8-5 Wisconsin went to the Rose Bowl. Proving that when it isn’t a semifinal it means nothing more than any other major bowl.

cool atmosphere,
Dump of a stadium.
cool history.
 

It depends on a lot. If the CFP were expanded to 12.....the Gophers will make it. Eventually. It would be interesting if the Rose Bowl as a semi-final would be automatically shifted to a potential Big Ten team? No idea....but if that were the case....it's not out of the question. Problem is that other conferences have their CFP bowl destinations too.
 

The one counter I have to the "it's not the same thing anymore" crowd is:

back when the Big Ten champion simply went to the Rose Bowl and that was it, that was the post-season .... you weren't guaranteed that even if you were undefeated and even if you won the Rose Bowl, that voters would vote you as the national champion.


So in a way -- maybe a bit of a reach, I admit -- it wasn't all that different from playing in a Rose Bowl now but that doesn't have any national title implications.


But then again, the OP is saying that starting with 2023's post-season, the Rose Bowl will always be on the path to a national title, and therefore the Gophers are going to be hard pressed to ever get that far again.

Yeah, that is a tough one. I think it will depend if they keep rotating the bowls, or if they make the Rose Bowl (and Sugar) a permanent semi-final game. That will be tough sledding to make it to the semi's, in a 12 bracket.

But if it rotates to a quarter final ... we just have to win a first round game to make it, potentially. Which could be against a G5 even.
 




I had an idea some years back and wrote to the commissioners of the Big 10/Pac !2 at the time.

It always made sense to me to have a Rose Series, A Big 10/Pac 12 game-of-the-week and have those games count as in-conference games.

Great marketing and exposure for both conferences and it could become a weekly TV event, like Monday night football. And truly nationwide.

If the Rose Bowl as we know it goes away, a season-long Run for the Roses could carry on the traditional rivalry nature of things even w/o the Rose Bowl necessarily.

You'd think the TV people would be salivating for such a thing, Pac 12 needs the help and exposure, too. If the TV suits insist on it, I'm sure it would get done.

My 2 cents.
 

I had an idea some years back and wrote to the commissioners of the Big 10/Pac !2 at the time.

It always made sense to me to have a Rose Series, A Big 10/Pac 12 game-of-the-week and have those games count as in-conference games.

Great marketing and exposure for both conferences and it could become a weekly TV event, like Monday night football. And truly nationwide.

If the Rose Bowl as we know it goes away, a season-long Run for the Roses could carry on the traditional rivalry nature of things even w/o the Rose Bowl necessarily.

You'd think the TV people would be salivating for such a thing, Pac 12 needs the help and exposure, too. If the TV suits insist on it, I'm sure it would get done.

My 2 cents.
I don't know that there is real motivation from 'tv people' to demand such match-ups.

I wonder how many more viewers will watch vs ... having to set this up 5 or 10 years ahead of time / wrangle everyone's OOC scheduling to align with the plans, and etc.
 

That f'n first quarter of the Iowa game...UGH!!!!!!!!!!! If we had actually shown up that quarter we very well could have won, would have been in Pasadena. And now here we are...

Sigh-U-Mah.

Go Gophers!!
No, it was continuing to put slow linebackers on Chris Perry against Michigan.
 



First half if we're being totally honest.
It still mystifies me that a highly motivated, undefeated Gopher team could play so poorly. The second half was a bit better, but a lot of that is based on the fact that Ferentz coached teams typically play pretty conservatively when Iowa gets a big lead.

Fleck will probably go to his grave wondering why a 9-0 team didn't play better.
 

Hope Springs Eternal. It will be planted in the dirt bed.
 

It still mystifies me that a highly motivated, undefeated Gopher team could play so poorly. The second half was a bit better, but a lot of that is based on the fact that Ferentz coached teams typically play pretty conservatively when Iowa gets a big lead.

Fleck will probably go to his grave wondering why a 9-0 team didn't play better.
Iowa was a top 15 team, came in with a great plan, had a strong enough defense to withstand a comeback attempt once the gopher defense made adjustments.
Defense has a bad first quarter and Tyler Johnson dropped the ball that would’ve led to a game tying drive.

we wouldn’t block the Iowa DL that day
 

They were also playing at home, in a very tough environment.

Winning road games is just damn hard.
 




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