College football traditions will be lost upon USC and UCLA’s Pac-12 exit, says Trojans Wire

Our Pac-12 college wires family lost a member on Thursday with the announcement that USC (along with UCLA) will be moving to the Big Ten in 2024.

Trojans Wire has been doing a tremendous job covering the development, and we recently asked managing editor Matt Zemek point-blank, are you a fan of the news?

Here’s what he told us:

Not at all. Why? Because this very likely blows up the Rose Bowl and the bowl system. It removes a remaining swath of college football traditions which are important to me and other fans of the sport who are over 40 years old and who grew up on the cherished rhythms and rituals of New Year’s Day. How does the Rose Bowl retain a claim to being part of college football tradition today? The Pac-12-Big Ten relationship which made the Rose Bowl what it is has been demolished. The Rose Bowl will cease to be a significant part of college football in the way we have known it to exist. You won’t have Michigan or Ohio State playing USC, Oregon or Washington in Pasadena anymore. That’s done. The Rose Bowl might continue to exist as a College Football Playoff quarterfinal or semifinal, but that makes it one game in a sea of other games, without any special standing. There might be a playoff game in Pasadena every year, but the destruction of the Pac-12-Big Ten dynamic makes this game a Pasadena game, and not “The Rose Bowl” as we have known it.

It’s a sad day for anyone who values college football’s traditions.