When the time came to choose a setting to paint in my intro to oil painting class at the Art Institute of Chicago, the choice was obvious. I selected the most cinematic scene in all of sports, “the end of the yellow brick road” as the legendary broadcaster Keith Jackson used to call it: The Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day.
The iconic stadium and the game affectionately known as the “granddaddy of them all,” has been staged 110 times and praised in countless ways. In the ESPN introduction for the latest edition, it was deemed “a Bermuda grass proving ground and sunbathed promised land for folk from the frozen north.”
It’s fantasy land brought to life, and the only way to fully realize that is to experience it first hand at least once. It’s about so much more than just football. It’s about sunshine and warmth in the dead of winter; accompanying renewal and promise as the new year begins.
Kirk Herbstreit, arguably the most brand-name college football analyst going these days, perfectly articulated the transcendent physical beauty that is the setting of the Rose Bowl.
He also posited the idea that every college football season should end there with the national championship game.
A couple weeks prior to calling his ninth straight Rose Bowl, during a 2014 media conference call, Herbstreit perfectly described the setting and experience.
“When you grew up the way I did in the midwest, it’s a setting and a view that’s the best in the sport — and among the best of any in all of sports,” he said.
“The feel is immaculate. The palm trees around the stadium, the San Gabriel mountains, I would say the only thing missing is Steven Spielberg at the kickoff saying, ‘Ready? Action!’ with 100,000 people there as extras as the game starts.
It’s an unbelievable setting and it would be the the perfect way to end every college football season, in my humble opinion, because it’s such a beautiful scene.
Before calling his 12th Rose Bowl (in 2019), and thereby extending the record he already holds over any other announcer, he added: “Every time I look at that grass it takes me back to being 9 or 10 years old.”
He mentioned his Midwestern upbringing (Herbstreit is from Centerville, Ohio) and what Pasadena meant to him growing up. As a fellow upper midwesterner, I can relate. We grew up on the idea of this setting as a quasi-Eden, more Shangri-la than football stadium.
You have to earn your way there. Only the elite can escape their winter of discontent for the sublime sunset against the southwestern architecture juxtaposed against the San Gabriels.
It’s truly a place that’s hard to define and difficult to describe.
As the holiday season comes to an end, the Rose Bowl setting and game epitomize what the concept of tradition truly means.
Paul M. Banks is the owner/manager of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He’s written for numerous publications, including the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune. He regularly appears on NTD News and WGN News Now, while writing for the International Baseball Writers Association of America. You can follow the website on Twitter.