Rose Bowl

These are two players with drastically different resumes. Oregon linebacker Michael Clay is the Good Samaritan, who spent Thanksgiving weekend helping provide dinners for the needy. Kiko Alonso is the Ducks' troubled linebacker, suspended twice after scrapes with the law. The common ground for the two was the Rose Bowl on Monday. Both came up with key defensive plays in a game where little defense was played. Alonso intercepted Wisconsin quarterback Russell Wilson's pass at the Badgers' 39-yard line, near the end of the third quarter to set up a Ducks' touchdown for a 42-38 lead.

Brett Hundley , Kevin Prince , Richard Brehaut and the rest of UCLA's quarterbacks will have to wait. Coach Jim Mora said Thursday that a decision on a starter will come in August, two weeks into fall training camp. "I'm going to announce our starting quarterback on Aug. 16, after two weeks of summer camp," Mora said. "We're planning on having real intense scrimmages on the 15th and the 16th and right after that, it is go time. " UCLA opens the season at Rice two weeks later.

"Purple to Pasadena" is a Rose Bowl refrain that traditionally should have everything to do with Northwestern and nothing to do with Texas Christian. Gary Barnett once made good on a vow to lead Evanston to the Land of Milk and Sunny (except for most of this month), but no one 15 years ago could have imagined a "Gary" Patterson leading Forth Worth forth. "Horns to Hollywood" should be a battle cry connected to Arizona's brass section, not to frog legs. Texas Christian vs. Wisconsin is a terrific Rose Bowl matchup, unless you're from 1978 and think Stanford vs. Wisconsin was the obvious answer.

I already miss the Bowl Championship Series like an old pair of shoes that might have stepped in something. Is it really going away in two years? What will be left to lampoon? College football's smart people, however, insist it's time to move forward to some sort of post-2014, post-modern, postseason involving four teams. Although ordinary folks would call this a playoff, conference commissioners as late as Wednesday preferred the euphemism "four-team event. " After two days of meetings in South Florida, commissioners on Thursday only officially announced there would not be an eight or 16-team playoff.

Alabama won the Bowl Championship Series national title Thursday night, 37-21, using two jarring back blows to two Texas quarterbacks to turn the Rose Bowl into Crimson, clover and game over. Two back shots is what it took, one at the beginning and one near the end. Defensive end Marcell Dareus knocked Texas starter Colt McCoy out with a right shoulder injury on the Longhorns' fifth play -- ripping the spark plug out of Texas' engine. "I really didn't try to hit him that hard," Dareus said.

You can deny the existence of UFOs and Bigfoot but not that the Rose Bowl has changed since joining the Bowl Championship Series in 1998. Whether it has changed for better or worse remains an open discussion. The BCS needed the Rose Bowl's inclusion to release the champions of the Pacific 10 and Big Ten conferences, if they were ranked No. 1 or No. 2, to a newfangled system that would pair the top teams in a "national title" game. So the Rose Bowl relented. It's been different.

The year is new, college football has gotten old. There's a hockey game in town, so you put on a T-shirt and flip-flops and head to . . . The Rose Bowl. Go ahead, laugh. It's not entirely a fantasy. NHL executives, justifiably proud of the Winter Classic game at Chicago's Wrigley Field on New Year's Day, have been brainstorming about potential sites for future outdoor games.

There's no telling if or when an NFL team might return to Los Angeles, but the Rose Bowl wants to be ready if that happens. Stadium backers want the venue to be a temporary home for an NFL team while a new NFL stadium is being constructed downtown, in City of Industry or, perhaps, someplace else. (The Coliseum would likely compete for the same temporary-home status.) In order for the Rose Bowl to be considered, it would need to provide an environmental impact report that on the viability of playing host to NFL games, a report that would take as long as eight months to complete and cost approximately $400,000.

Starting in 2011, the Rose Bowl football game is moving from ABC to ESPN, the cable network announced Friday. "We were very specific when we did the Rose Bowl agreement back in 1989 about a free over-the-air broadcast," Rose Bowl Chief Executive Mitch Dorger said. "But the world in 1989 was different than it is in 2009." The game will remain on Jan. 1 in its traditional time slot of 2:10 p.m. "We knew it was coming," Dorger said. "We don't think it's going to be damaging . . .

Pacific 10 Conference and Rose Bowl officials are considering an annual kickoff game — maybe pitting the Pac-10 against the Big Ten — that would give the West Coast a stronger presence at the start of each college football season. With the conference borrowing the Pasadena stadium for its annual media day Thursday, officials said the idea is in the discussion stage. "The Pac-10 has a tradition of playing some really tough out-of-conference games early on," Commissioner Larry Scott said.

The labor-intensive drive toward a new postseason in college football continued Wednesday in South Florida with conference commissioners agreeing so far only that the status quo is off the table. "There will be change," said Bill Hancock, Bowl Championship Series executive director. "How significant no one knows yet. " Commissioners wrap up their annual spring meetings Thursday with the hope of taking three or four postseason options back to their conference presidents. The goal is to have resolution by midsummer in preparation for contract negotiations next fall.

"The road ends here" is the definitive catchphrase that NCAA basketball uses to encapsulate a long season culminating at the Final Four. College football's postseason bandwagon, meanwhile, continues on rickety wheels over ruts. Motto: "When will it ever end?" The answer probably lies somewhere between this week and midsummer. There can't be an end of the road to the controversial 14-year-old Bowl Championship Series just yet because two years remain on the existing contract.

There's no telling if or when an NFL team might return to Los Angeles, but the Rose Bowl wants to be ready if that happens. Stadium backers want the venue to be a temporary home for an NFL team while a new NFL stadium is being constructed downtown, in City of Industry or, perhaps, someplace else. (The Coliseum would likely compete for the same temporary-home status.) In order for the Rose Bowl to be considered, it would need to provide an environmental impact report that on the viability of playing host to NFL games, a report that would take as long as eight months to complete and cost approximately $400,000.

Kirk Herbstreit is his generation's Keith Jackson. The broadcasting face of college football will wrap up more than four months of keeping up with the sport's frenetic news cycle by analyzing Monday night's Bowl Championship Series title game on ESPN at New Orleans Superdome. The former Ohio State quarterback and current "College GameDay" analyst with Lee Corso traversed the nation weekly along with host Chris Fowler and co-analyst Desmond Howard to the country's best games.

These are two players with drastically different resumes. Oregon linebacker Michael Clay is the Good Samaritan, who spent Thanksgiving weekend helping provide dinners for the needy. Kiko Alonso is the Ducks' troubled linebacker, suspended twice after scrapes with the law. The common ground for the two was the Rose Bowl on Monday. Both came up with key defensive plays in a game where little defense was played. Alonso intercepted Wisconsin quarterback Russell Wilson's pass at the Badgers' 39-yard line, near the end of the third quarter to set up a Ducks' touchdown for a 42-38 lead.

The Chip Kelly era at Oregon has featured conference championships, multiple 10-win seasons, cutting-edge pyrotechnic offenses - even space-age uniforms that have made the Ducks the talk of college football. The only thing missing was a victory in a Bowl Championship Series game. And though Kelly and his players downplayed that fact throughout the week leading up to the 98th Rose Bowl, the jubilant scene on the field after a 45-38 victory over Wisconsin on Monday said otherwise.

Our hair smells of lemon zest. Our mayor looks like Bert Convy. Welcome to Los Angeles, the big shopping mall by the sea. No refunds. No exchanges. If you happen to be in town for some football, you're in luck. On Friday, we'll all squeeze -- kinda cozy like -- into the big stadium for a game pitting some flu-colored team from the Great Northwest against a bunch of hicks from the heartland. Don't get me wrong, we love you yokels. Full of heart, the heartland. To me, the only way you could make the heartland more appealing would be to wrap it in bacon, which you could, of course, and still have plenty left over for a nice pork pie the next day -- yum. So, welcome, welcome, welcome . . . pull up a starlet, make yourselves at home.

Three games in the Wild West this weekend could factor prominently in finding an opponent for the Big Ten champion in this year's Rose Bowl. One of them even involves the Pacific 10 Conference. How's that for a switch? Every time you turn around in college football people are making rules up as they go along. It used to be you set your clock to Pac-10 vs. Big Ten in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, but some would say the new system is more like a broken clock ? it's right twice a day. After 12 years of the Bowl Championship Series, most have become anesthetized to the fact the Rose Bowl must surrender one or both its conference champions to the title game if they are ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in the final BCS standings.

Lavasier Tuinei had been Oregon's Mr. Anonymous on a team with several more highly publicized players, but that changed in the Ducks' 45-38 victory over Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl on Monday. Tuinei established career highs with eight catches for 158 yards and two touchdowns and was chosen offensive player of the game. "I really don't care about the fame, having all eyes on me and all that," Tuinei said. "I just go out there and help the team win. " To underscore that point, Tuinei said his favorite play in the game was a block he threw downfield to help spring De'Anthony Thomas on a 64-yard touchdown run. "That's L.T.," quarterback Darron Thomas said.

He was standing still, a brilliant Pasadena sun glittering off his silver helmet, a powerful Crenshaw legacy embedded in his darkened jersey. And then, just like that, he was gone. Last winter, De'Anthony Thomas was a prized USC running back recruit before suddenly and stunningly sprinting into the wilds of Oregon. On his first official football visit home Monday, he disappeared again, twice, more jaws dropping, more heads shaking, the kid who got away running away with a Rose Bowl record in a 45-38 victory over Wisconsin.