Tag: Tournament of Roses Parade

Tournament of Roses Parade canceled for first time since 1945 because of COVID-19

The venerable Tournament of Roses Parade has been canceled for the first time since 1945 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Well, we have another monumental cancelation to report amid the growing numbers of COVID-19 cases this country is seeing, and it’s a very sad one. The annual Tournament of Roses Parade has officially been canceled according to findings by our sister site Trojans Wire. It’s all based on reporting from the Los Angeles Times.

If you’ve ever been to the Rose Bowl, visited Pasadena, and talked to folks that live in and around the beautiful city itself, you know the place the parade has. Many hold the parade in higher regard than the football game itself that was only born as a side event to the spectacular Rose Parade. It is engrained in the very fabric of that city, and having an opportunity to march or be a part of a float that meanders down the streets is a lifelong dream for many.

I myself had my first experience at the Rose Bowl in January of 2019 covering Ohio State’s win over Washington. A fellow writer talked me into a last-minute ticket to the parade to accompany her, and little did I know the memory it would create.

Come to find out, I was lucky the parade organizers made an exception in the first place because those tickets are locked down and accounted for even earlier than the Rose Bowl. But somehow, I made it in, sat in the press section, and was amazed and bedazzled by the amount of work, pride, and pageantry that went into it all.

It is truly an event in and of itself, and this will be the first time since 1945 it when World War II was gripping the nation that the parade will be shelved. Now, it’s a casualty of another war we are fighting, one that involves an invisible virus that is about as transmissible as any we’ve seen in a long, long, time.

You may thank that it’s awfully early to cancel an event that’s still almost six months away, but you have to remember that many of these floats take months to put together, and the uncertainty of high school bands and other potential participants’ willingness to jump on an airplane and fly across the country in the middle of all the uncertainty is just too much to ask. There’s no real way to go forward and have the ability to put the breaks on without significant and unfair loss of money and time for many.

So, this now begs the obvious question that we might not want to discuss: What does this mean for the Rose Bowl? Are we just waiting for the other shoe to fall on the “Granddaddy of them All?”

Stay tuned …

Tournament of Roses Parade canceled; no parade for 1st time since 1945

Big news, but not a surprise

The last year in which USC and Notre Dame did not play: 1945. The last year in which the Tournament of Roses Parade was not held: 1945. You can readily guess why those who classic American events — staples of our culture — were not held 75 years ago: World War II.

The coronavirus pandemic — in its durability, scope, and reach — is continuously hammering home the point that it is uprooting the world on the scale of a cataclysmic war.

The specific manifestations of severe disruption are different, but the general reality of severe disruption is the same.

It was announced on Wednesday, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, that the 2021 Tournament of Roses Parade has been canceled.

One could reasonably ask, “Why make this decision so early? Don’t we have some time to wait?”

The answer is that the various facets of a parade are complicated and need to all flow together.

As noted in the Times’ report, there is little certainty that high school bands would be willing or able to travel across the country in the middle of flu season to participate. That’s one point. Another point is that the construction of floats and assembly of flowers and other materials is well behind schedule. Another obvious point is that there wouldn’t be a crowd on hand to watch, given the need to socially distance. All the things which are part of a parade — the bands, the floats, the flowers, the crowds — just aren’t in place, and given that a vaccine for COVID-19 is almost certain to not be ready by early January, it isn’t too early to make this decision.

It is the wise choice… if there was ever any choice at all.

We will have more on this story at Trojans Wire, because there is an obvious question raised by the Tournament of Roses Parade cancellation. It relates to college football’s postseason plans this coming winter.