There is a grand old tradition that the sun always shines for the Rose Bowl. Let the poor suckers back East eat their hearts out.
Pete Carroll would simply not let rain -- or even dark clouds of envy -- intrude on his first visit here as the coach of Southern California.
Carroll has maintained his luminous disposition for a month, ever since the computer operated by the Bowl Championship Series banned his team from the Arbitrary Bowl down in New Orleans.
"A gorgeous day, a gorgeous setting," Carroll said in describing his outing to the Rose Bowl, and he would not budge from it.
Life is not fair. USC has been voted the top team in the country by the major polls of coaches and writers, yet by the vagaries of the BCS computer it has been banished to the Rose Bowl, where it will play Michigan on Thursday afternoon.
How sad. These two classic American teams from two grand conferences must settle for "the granddaddy of them all," as Michigan and USC players grew up hearing the Rose Bowl described on television.
"I would never, never be disappointed in playing in the Rose Bowl," said Carroll's counterpart, Lloyd Carr of Michigan. "That stadium, outdoors, on grass, in the sunshine. How could you be disappointed?"
Meanwhile, Oklahoma, which was clobbered, 35-7, by Kansas State in the Big 12 Conference championship game, managed to slip into the Sugar Bowl on Sunday against LSU. By definition, the winner of that game will be able to say forever that it won the BCS title for the 2003 season.
College football coaches are notorious for throwing guilt. They thrive on being the underdog, the outsider, the team that gets no respect. They are always looking for bragging rights.
Most coaches in Carroll's position would whine about being whacked by the rigid process that sets up only two candidates for the BCS.
Things were better the old way, when four major bowls selected the opponents, then polls were taken after the games. You could have one, two, three different champions. Democracy in action.
Heck, President Nixon picked his own personal winner in 1969, dubbing Texas the national champion over Penn State. (And look what happened to him, Joe Paterno might say.)
This new BCS system clearly does not work, as Carroll and USC have discovered. More tinkering is inevitable. But in the process, Carroll has taken the high road. Always has. When he was coaching the Jets, he put up a basketball court so he could play hoops with his players. Tsk, tsk.
"`How could you have so much fun?"' Carroll paraphrased the criticism he heard back then. "`Don't you know it's football?' When I was at New England, I rode a bike from the dorm to the field. `Don't you know it's football?' It's better than walking. I have a need to have fun."
"It's worked out beautifully," he said, meaning that USC could still be voted first in the AP poll of writers and that the coaches in the USA Today/ESPN poll could show their independence and vote for USC if it wins the grand old Rose Bowl.
Carroll said he did not feel "upset" or "jilted" but he did call the BCS matchups "a clear example of the system not working out right." He added, "I'd rather play for it, but we took what we got."
He said he would like to see the top six or eight conference champions play in the traditional major bowl games, then have a semifinal round followed by a championship game.
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