PSU Would Be Welcomed by Rose Bowl at BetLM

PSU Would Be Welcomed by Rose Bowl

The chief admin­is­tra­tive offi­cer of the Rose Bowl says if Penn State wins the Big Ten title, the Nit­tany Lions will be free to play in the top-tier post­sea­son game as far as he’s concerned.

Kevin Ash said Thurs­day that the Rose Bowl would let the Big Ten decide if there is a rea­son its cham­pion shouldn’t play the Pac 12 win­ner in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 2.

“Who­ever the cham­pi­ons are,” Ash said, “we’ll wel­come with open arms.”

There have been calls for Penn State to decline a bowl bid in the after­math of the child sex-abuse scan­dal involv­ing for­mer defen­sive coor­di­na­tor Jerry San­dusky. The scan­dal led to the fir­ings of coach Joe Paterno and the school president.

New PSU pres­i­dent Rod Erick­son didn’t give a defin­i­tive answer last week when asked about a prospec­tive bowl bid.

“We’ll wait and see at the appro­pri­ate time what deci­sion is made,” Erick­son said. “At this point, the expec­ta­tion would be where they deserve to play, they will play.”

Interim coach Tom Bradley also has said he hopes his team plays in a bowl.

The Nit­tany Lions (8–2, 5–1) are among eight bowl-eligible teams in the Big Ten and are alone in first place in the Lead­ers Divi­sion with two regular-season games left.

Big Ten spokesman Scott Chip­man said his con­fer­ence has taken no posi­tion on whether Penn State should accept a bowl bid and that the league’s selec­tion pro­ce­dure would not be altered because of the scandal.

Cap­i­tal One Bowl chief exec­u­tive Steve Hogan, whose bowl is No. 2 in the Big Ten selec­tion order, said his com­mit­tee would base its matchup on on-the-field per­for­mance and that it would be unfair to penal­ize play­ers who had noth­ing to do with the scan­dal. San­dusky, who is accused of molest­ing eight boys over 15 years and says he is inno­cent, retired from Penn State in 1999.

Spokes­men for the Out­back and Insight bowls, Nos. 3 and 4 in the Big Ten order, declined to com­ment on how Penn State would be viewed by their selec­tion committees.

The Gator (No. 5), Meineke Car Care (No. 6) and Lit­tle Cae­sars Pizza (No. bowls didn’t return mes­sages seek­ing comment.

Tom Star, pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive of the Tick­etC­ity Bowl, the Big Ten’s No. 7 bowl, said he wouldn’t hes­i­tate to take Penn State if the Lions were available.

“Our upper­most thoughts are with the vic­tims,” Star said. “I don’t think any­one has been dealt more of an injus­tice in life than them. I think it would be a fur­ther injus­tice if the right to play in a bowl game was taken from the play­ers. I don’t see how it helps the sit­u­a­tion. It’s not an aca­d­e­mic sit­u­a­tion, it has noth­ing to do with the play­ers on the cur­rent team, and there are no NCAA violations.”

Penn State is still very much in the run­ning for the Rose Bowl.

The Lions are a game ahead of Wis­con­sin in the Lead­ers Divi­sion and would clinch a spot in the inau­gural Big Ten cham­pi­onship game on Dec. 3 in Indi­anapo­lis if it wins road games against Ohio State and Wis­con­sin the next two weeks. PSU, with help, could get to the title game even if it loses one of those games.

The Rose Bowl matches the win­ner of the Big Ten and Pac 12 unless one of the con­fer­ence cham­pi­ons is Nos. 1 or 2 in the BCS stand­ings. In that case, the Big Ten or Pac 12 team is released to play in the BCS title game and the con­fer­ence runner-up takes the champion’s spot in the Rose Bowl.

The Big Ten-Pac 12 agree­ment with the Rose Bowl has been in place since 1946.

“Based on our long-standing rela­tion­ship,” Ash said, “we would embrace any cham­pion from the Big Ten Conference.”

Host­ing the Nit­tany Lions this year would cer­tainly mean deal­ing to some degree with the San­dusky scan­dal. But fan inter­est in how Penn State responds to its first bowl game with­out Paterno in almost a half cen­tury would likely draw rat­ings, too.

Rose Bowl spokes­woman Gina Chap­pin said she couldn’t pre­dict how the pub­lic would feel about Penn State play­ing in one of col­lege football’s pre­mier games. Chap­pin said Rose Bowl offi­cials have not dis­cussed any poten­tial back­lash from invit­ing Penn State.

“I don’t think we can con­trol pub­lic opin­ion on this,” she said. “We can’t empha­size enough how sen­si­tive a sub­ject this is. I think it really is going to be a split story out there for peo­ple who still have anger or are upset ver­sus the peo­ple who try to pull together and see through this should they come to Pasadena.”

Hogan, of the Cap­i­tal One Bowl, said the child sex-abuse scan­dal won’t be a fac­tor when, and if, his selec­tion com­mit­tee con­sid­ers Penn State.

“It’s about what they’ve earned on the field and how it com­pares to their brethren in the Big Ten,” Hogan said. “Any­thing that comes with that we’ll deal with.”

Asso­ci­ated Press writer Genaro Armas in State Col­lege, Pa., con­tributed to this story.

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