On Iowa Daily Briefing 5.15.12 -- Crystal over roses

CHICAGO -- The Big Ten wants to own the Rose Bowl, and so it will, along with their buddies from the Pac-12. Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany has made this clear since college football has veered into serious talk about a playoff last month.

What can Delany and the league expect to gain from playing the Rose Bowl chip? Probably not much.

The playoff models are a major topic of discussion for the Big Ten's illuminati, which meets today and Wednesday in Chicago. The Big Ten is in with the playoff state of mind, but it does want some stickiness with the Rose. Makes sense, of course, but is it viable? Is it that big of a deal? Do players who've grown up in the Big Ten footprint identify with the Rose as the ultimate prize anymore?

If I'm the Big Ten, my play is from home playoff games. That is a game changer. Rather than play an SEC team in a national semifinal at a sunny place in Florida, get the SEC team at, say, Ann Arbor in December. Weather could be the great equalizer, although the way Nick Saban builds teams at Alabama, it probably won't mean a whole lot. Saban's teams are armadillos, weather-proof, defense-first armadillos.

The Big Ten is going to want to "get something" out of the playoff discussions. Will it be protecting the Rose Bowl, which hasn't been the sole domain of Big Ten/Pac-12 since 2002, be it? It's a thought, but it's sunk by sentiment and the fact that TCU, Oklahoma and Texas have played in Rose Bowls more recently than a lot of Big Ten teams (Iowa's last appearance was 1991).

Everything is on sale here, let's stop pretending it isn't. Tradition wears a Nike swoosh. The Rose Bowl isn't and hasn't been the top of the mountain in college football for a long time. The crystal football is the thing, and a playoff gets the Big Ten to the table.

Let's do the playoffs and let's do them the way the NFL does, home sites. If Lambeau Field can host an NFC title game, then Ann Arbor, Columbus, Madison, East Lansing, Lincoln and Iowa City can host national semifinals.

The Rose Bowl will fit in somewhere. It's not going to vanish, but the Big Ten needs to elevate its thinking to the crystal football. That is the thing.

[Coverage note: Scott Doctherman and I are in Chicago for the Big Ten spring meetings. We'll see what we see and post some stuff.]

LINKIN CONTINENTAL

-- There is virtually no off-season for major-college football players, as this article by none other than the university's athletics Web site illustrates.

But a short break is currently in progress. Iowa quarterback James Vandenberg is headed to Canada to do some hunting, and cornerback Micah Hyde is going home to Ohio and will see some baseball games in Cleveland.

Hyde is from Fostoria, Ohio. It's also the home of WFOB-AM.

-- Who is Barrett Kelpin? He's a University of Iowa golfer. And on Monday he advanced from a U.S. Open local qualifier to sectional play in a few weeks. If he advances out of the sectional, he joins golf's elite at the Olympic Club in San Francisco next month for our national Open.

Also among the five players out of a field of 71 who advanced from the local qualifier in Davenport was Sean McCarty, a former Hawkeye golfer. McCarty qualified for the 2003 Open and is the club pro at Brown Deer Golf Club in Coralville. He has long had PGA Tour-type talent.

-- Another day, another team changing conferences.

Virginia Commonwealth to the Atlantic 10? Well, at least Virginia actually borders the Atlantic Ocean. Colorado and Utah joining the then-Pacific-10 didn't quite ring true.

Nor did Houston and SMU and Boise State and San Diego State joining the Big East for football.

Nor did ... well, we could go on and on, couldn't we?

-- Afghanistan has its first bowling alley. It is very popular.

Compiled by Mike Hlas