Football is enhanced by its aesthetics. To be sure, snow games can be wonderfully pleasing to the eye. Games played in a bitter cold with the breath coming out of players’ mouths can be a dramatic and delicious feast for the senses. NFL Films certainly brought home that reality in its documentation of the Ice Bowl between the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys. However, while cold-weather games and snow games certainly have a legitimate place in the larger realm of football events which are beautiful to observe — either in person or on television — the ultimate aesthetic ideal for a football game is the Rose Bowl.
More than the Super Bowl, the Rose Bowl checks all the boxes for football’s ultimate visual feast.
A Super Bowl field is definitely a gorgeous and polished field, as is the case for the Rose Bowl. However, the Rose Bowl isn’t played in a dome, and the game isn’t ordinarily played in the daytime, either. The current Eastern time start for the Super Bowl is 6:30 to 6:35 Eastern time. Even if played in the Central time zone in early February, that is a night game. Only in the West is the Super Bowl a true daytime start, and in the most recent West Coast Super Bowl, the very tall structure of Levi’s Stadium — the opposite of the Rose Bowl stadium’s simple intimacy — engulfed the playing field in shadows even for a 3:30 kickoff. If the game was technically a day game, it still didn’t involve sunlight in the gameday aesthetic.
The Rose Bowl, though, always starts in sunlight just after 2 p.m. local time on New Year’s Day (or in years when January 1 is a Sunday, January 2). There is a reason the Rose Bowl wants to remain in a specific time slot. (If you hate that the Rose Bowl gets what it wants, you should instead focus on why the Sugar Bowl insists on its New Year’s Night slot, which has a much more fragile claim on college football tradition. The Sugar Bowl is the troublemaker relative to the College Football Playoff’s inability to play both semifinals on New Year’s Day.)
The Rose Bowl gives us something the Super Bowl no longer provides: sun-splashed gameday visuals. The first half is played in sun before the second half is played in shade and the fourth quarter is played at dusk, with nightfall greeting Southern California.
Look at the cover photo for the story. You wouldn’t have that visual if the Rose Bowl was a night game. You wouldn’t also have these visuals before kickoff of the Granddaddy:
The Rose Bowl is football’s ultimate tradition. It began in 1902. It preceded the Super Bowl by 65 years. It is fitting that as the Super Bowl — which has been played multiple times in the Rose Bowl stadium — has become more and more of a night game with its commercial encroachments, the Rose Bowl has remained the mid-afternoon college football classic we can always count on. Same time. Same place. Same natural-grass field. Same January 1 date.
The Rose Bowl might be old, but its beauty is timeless. No football game is more pleasant to look at than the Granddaddy, who will always be in great physical shape on the first day of every new year.
Happy New Year from all of us at Badgers Wire. Hopefully, Wisconsin will add to your happiness against Oregon, but even if the Badgers lose, taking in a Rose Bowl will never cease to be one of life’s greatest pleasures.