Coming up roses

THE 2002 ROSE BOWL REALLY stuck in Southern California's craw. The game had been a Big Ten-Pacific 10 affair since 1947, and we were accustomed to seeing sturdy Midwesterners, usually from Ohio or Michigan (though every so often from Iowa or Wisconsin). Our teams were USC, UCLA, an occasional Stanford, or one of those teams from the rainy Northwest or the dry Arizona desert.The 2002 game, Miami versus Nebraska, was a rude break with tradition. It came courtesy of the Bowl Championship Series, a flawed and confusing system designed to determine a national collegiate football champion. The title contest itself rotates among four existing bowls — Orange, Sugar, Rose and Fiesta.So in 2003, the Rose Bowl was stuck with Oklahoma beating Washington State. The 2004 game just happened to revert to a contest between the Big Ten and the Pac-10, with USC beating Michigan. But this past January, Texas came to Pasadena with that "Eyes of Texas" song, all that orange apparel and those drawls, and knocked off Michigan 38-37. OK, it was a great game. Meanwhile, in Miami on Jan. 4, undefeated USC drubbed undefeated Oklahoma to win its second consecutive national title.Next month, it's the Rose Bowl's turn to host the championship game. And one participant is that interloper Texas, ranked No. 2 in the country. But we won't complain too much because the other team is No. 1 USC, an extraordinary powerhouse gunning for its third consecutive national title. Both teams are undefeated. USC's offense ranks among the best in college football history, although it's difficult to try to compare it with, for instance, the Army teams of 1945 and 1946 or Oklahoma in 1971. In the past, USC suffered, perhaps unfairly — or was it a UCLA plot? — from the rap that it was just a football factory supported by a corps of fanatic fans and arrogant alumni. Gratefully, that seems to be in the past. This is a classy operation. And the Trojans seem to have fun playing the game.We still don't quite get the link to ancient Troy. (UCLA's Bruins, we know, can trace their roots to California's Bear Flag Republic.) And we cringe a bit when that big white horse stomps the turf and the mounted Trojan thrusts his sword skyward. But we'll take a magnificent horse over a sad-looking cow any day.