January 3

It's still the Rose Bowl. Doesn't matter when they play it, what school colors they paint on the field, or who presents it. As long as they're playing in the big oval in that Pasadena canyon, it's still the Rose Bowl.

The more the bowl landscape shifted in the last decade, the more I embraced the consistency of the Rose Bowl. Always on New Year's Day, always starting in the afternoon, always the Pacific 10 vs. the Big Ten, no goofy sponsor logos all over the field.

I have covered all of the major bowl games, and nothing topped the Rose Bowl on game day. I loved driving down the residential streets of the Arroyo Seco during the Rose Parade, the world's greatest traffic diversion. I loved looking out from the press box and seeing the gorgeous backdrop of the San Gabriel Mountains. I loved that it started in daylight and ended in darkness. But everything has to change at some point. If not, they'd still be holding chariot races at the Rose Bowl instead of a football game.

You can't be in favor of a playoff system and adamantly opposed to tampering with Rose Bowl tradition. Not if you want the granddaddy to stay in the loop.

If you want to preserve the Rose Bowl, it has to stay relevant. Don't let it drop off the scene like the Cotton Bowl. (Did you watch the Cotton Bowl this year? Did you know which teams were in it? Did you know it still existed?)

The Rose Bowl (now presented by AT&T) can still play a role in a playoff system, rotating with the Orange, Sugar and Fiesta bowls to host a true national championship game.

And the Rose Bowl can still be special.

It has built up enough lore that it will always stand apart, the same way there is Lambeau Field and then there are other NFL stadiums. Don't you think it meant a lot to Tiger Woods that he won the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach? The Chicago Cubs added lights and luxury boxes to Wrigley Field, but it still feels like "the friendly confines."

Some forms always hold. Like Miami's trash-talking ways. After a quiet week, Hurricane offensive line coach Art Kehoe stepped to the microphone at a pep rally Tuesday and said, "We're going to run the ball, and we're going to bring it right up the Big Red's [butt]!"

Ah, tradition.

But if steadfast rules can change, so can perspectives. After all, the Rose Bowl has already been played on Jan. 2 during the dozen times New Year's Day fell on a Sunday.

"The game is when it is," Miami Coach Larry Coker answered, when asked about playing the big bowl game on Jan. 3. "It's getting to the point now, you want play on the third. It's the last game of the year."

As I was growing up in Los Angeles, the Rose Bowl started to lose importance to me. When you see it as the site of UCLA games, soccer matches and swap meets, when you drive by it and fly over it in the course of regular life, it becomes part of the backdrop. Like the Eiffel Tower to Parisians.

Going to college in the Midwest made me appreciate how much it means. From 1,700 miles away, Pasadena is an exotic location. Shangri-la.

Big Ten coaches would play for a tie if it could guarantee the conference title and a Rose Bowl berth, even if it cost them a shot at a national championship. The Rose Bowl came first, because that's what mattered the most.

Other conferences and the major independents had their games--and usually a better shot at playing for a championship. But deep inside, I think, they were all a little envious that they couldn't play in the Rose Bowl. Even the name sounds more desirable than a piece of fruit or some sweetener.

I stood on the field and watched Joe Paterno come out of the tunnel and gaze around the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day, 1995. The Nittany Lions had gone undefeated in their second season in the Big Ten. Paterno had been at Penn State for 45 years, had seen just about all college football had to offer, and yet he wore a look of wonder, later calling the experience one of the best of his career.

A Northwestern student once drove to L.A. from his summer internship in Arizona, just so he could peer through the locked gates of the stadium. He thought he'd never get another chance to see it. Little did he know the Wildcats would make their storybook run to the roses the next season.

I'm a Northwestern alum myself; I was there the night Gary Barnett first talked about "taking the Purple to Pasadena," and I was there to see his dream come to fruition. I was glad that the Big Ten still operated outside of the then-Bowl Alliance. There was something about having that set destination that made that phrase become such a mantra. "Taking the 'Cats to the championship game--wherever it should happen to be," didn't have quite the same ring.

I still have a few purple blades of grass I plucked from the end zone on Jan. 1, 1996. It meant that much to me to have my school's colors on that field.

So now we have the orange and green of Miami and the red and white of Nebraska. It's an especially jarring mix because orange and green is such an ugly combination, and Nebraska is here by virtue of a flawed BCS system.

The Cornhuskers don't apologize for being invited, and they've responded by giving the place its proper respect.

"I'm just so excited that my last game and my last playing day on the field being a Nebraska quarterback is going to be in Pasadena at the Rose Bowl," quarterback Eric Crouch said.

What's so bad about letting other people get a chance to experience the magic of the Rose Bowl?

And there are positives surrounding the new time and date. In one of my favorite Jim Murray columns, he blamed the unfailingly perfect New Year's Day weather at the Rose Bowl for inspiring the masses in the Midwest to pack up the Winnebagos and move to Southern California. That won't happen this year. Now everyone else will find out what we already know: L.A. can be pretty cold at night. Stay where you are.

You might choose to look at the calendar and see Jan. 3. I choose to look at the stadium, to see the same place where all the memories were made, the place that's still the granddaddy of them all.

*

J.A. Adande can be reached at: j.a.adande@latimes.com.