The name "Gerald Freeny" probably doesn't ring a bell.
If you're old enough to remember when the most under-appreciated moment of each college football season was hearing TBDBITL blasting California Here I Come as players danced off the field following a conference-clinching victory, it's a name you would be looking forward to learning - and quickly forgetting - during the postgame celebration. Like "Ronald Conzonire" in 2009, "W.H. Griest Jr." in 1996 or "Don Judson" in 1984.
| TEAM | TITLES | ROSES | COY |
|---|---|---|---|
| OHIO STATE | 16 | 4 | 1 |
| MICHIGAN | 13 | 11 | 5 |
| WISCONSIN | 6 | 6 | 5 |
| IOWA | 5 | 4 | 6 |
| MICHIGAN STATE | 5 | 2 | 3 |
| PENN STATE (1993-) | 4 | 3 | 5 |
| ILLINOIS | 3 | 2 | 5 |
| NORTHWESTERN | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| PURDUE | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| NEBRASKA (2011-) | 0 | 1* | 0 |
| INDIANA | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| MARYLAND (2014-) | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| MINNESOTA | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| RUTGERS (2014-) | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Freeny is the current president of the Tournament of Roses. He had a prime speaking slot yesterday in Chicago at the Big Ten's 47th Annual Kickoff Luncheon as Tournament of the Roses presidents often do, and in a few months he will have a starring role in one of 2018's classic college football moments when he personally delivers an invitation to one lucky Big Ten team to ring in the new year in Pasadena and participate in The Granddaddy of Them All™.
His invite will go to the Big Ten champion - unless that team is already headed to the Cotton Bowl or the Orange Bowl, this season's CFP semifinal sites. In that case, Gerald will be inviting another team from the conference to face the Pac 12 representative. That opponent will be the conference champion, unless they're already committed to the Cotton or Orange for the same aspirational reasons.
No matter what happens though, the Rose Bowl is getting Biggie and Pac back together again, as our great-great-grandfathers did. It's happening, and it will be a clash between champ/champ, champ/runner-up, runner-up/champ or runner-up/runner-up. If either B1G or Pac send two teams to the CFP (there's a precedent for this) then you're looking at a 3rd place team getting the golden ticket to SoCal. It would be 7-5 Wisconsin going to Indy in 2012 to represent the Leaders Division all over again.
So that means the losers from the championship games held in Indianapolis and Santa Clara this December could end up facing each other in our most cherished bowl game. Recall that the winners of B1G and Pac 12 championship games from 2017 did face each other, but in Arlington, Texas on December 29, not Pasadena on New Year's Day.
The Granddaddy is old, charming and still handsome as hell, but he's lost a step.
Last season the "Rose Bowl" ended up being the Cotton Bowl, which is no longer played at the actual Cotton Bowl. Oklahoma faced Georgia in the actual Rose Bowl in an appearance that gave the Sooners more Rose Bowls in the current century than the Buckeyes, who own nine Big Ten crowns in said century yet have graced the Granddaddy just once.
It was just the latest instance over the past 40 years where Ohio State did everything necessary by ancient standards to have TBDBITL play California Here I Come before meeting the Gerald Freeny of that season, and still ending up in another state for the holidays. Since Woody Hayes was fired, the only thing that's been more elusive to Columbus than B1G Coach of the Year awards is that blessed trip to Pasadena.
The Oklahoma Sooners have been to more Rose Bowls this century than the Ohio State Buckeyes.
Ohio State's jaunts out to Southern California were waning long before the Rose Bowl began absorbing the cost of killing off the mythical national championship to elevate previous nothingburger bowls into a coalition of old and new money elites. No team has won the conference outright or in part more often than the Buckeyes, and no team converts a smaller percentage of its conference crowns into Rose Bowls than Ohio State.
The B1G champions from Columbus have missed out on the Rose Bowl a dozen times since Woody left the sideline, for a variety of reasons ranging from fortunate to self-inflicted:
- Wrong side of the "Who Went Last" rule (Iowa 1981, Wisconsin 1993 & 1998)
- Wrong side of the head-to-head tiebreaker (Michigan 1986, Penn State 2008, Wisconsin 2010)
- Accepted invitation to Fiesta Bowl for the BCS Title instead (Oklahoma/Washington State 2002)
- Locked out of BCS Title Game (Texas/USC 2005)
- Accepted invitation to BCS Title Game instead (Michigan 2006, Illinois 2007)
- Accepted invitation to Sugar Bowl for CFP National Semifinal (Florida State/Oregon 2014)
- Locked out of CFP National Semifinal (Oklahoma/Georgia 2017)
Twice Ohio State would have gone to the Rose Bowl had it simply lost more (2006, 2007) but that would have meant forfeiting BCS title opportunities. In both cases the B1G representative that went in the Buckeyes' place got - football term - aggressively depantsed. But they still got to go, and by ancient standards that's the best bowl trip of them all.
Jake Ballard converting 3rd & 13 in the 2010 game..
It's not an old guy aw-shucks-bring-back-the-good-old-days #take to wish your team could play in the Rose Bowl (which could shed the whole B1G-PAC champions arrangement and instead pair 8th place teams from the American Athletic and Mountain West conferences and still be the top destination in a glut of bowls). It's a wish for your team, colors and songs to adorn the only flawless college football game, on January 1st, well before the year begins its inevitable descent into banality.
The Rose Bowl is perfect regardless of whether the world happening around it is thriving or deteriorating, and Ohio State hasn't been able to get to Pasadena even when everything has gone right.
And in a cruel twist of irony, if the 2018 season plays out and Mr. Freeny gives that golden ticket to the Buckeyes, unencumbered by a Cotton or Orange invitation, that will mean that something must have gone wrong. Again.
