As "The Grandaddy Of Them All,'' the Rose Bowl always has claimed for itself a special place in the firmament of college football.

That, and the biggest guarantee, the best ratings and Keith Jackson.

	Like most people, Iowa quarterback Brad Banks thought the Hawkeyes were headed to the Rose Bowl after clinching a share of the Big Ten title.

Thus, when the Rose Bowl and its two cheery adjuncts, the Pacific-10 and Big 10 conferences, joined the BCS, it went in with less than its eyes open. They were, well, at sort of a squint.

To them, they could take or leave this poor man's playoff system. They got the national championship once every four years, and the rest of the time, they'd get their Pac-10/Big 10 cash cow on the job.

So you can understand their confusion, hurt and lawyer-shaking outrage when they woke up this bowl season and found out that the 2003 Rose Bowl is being played in Miami instead of Pasadena.

You see, due to a confluence of arcane rules that help make the BCS the most beloved organization since the national chapter of Burn Down A School In Your Town Today, the Orange Bowl has scooped up the best match-up the Rose Bowl could want this season -- USC vs. Iowa.

Pac 10 vs. Big 10. No. 4 vs. No. 5. Two of the three Heisman Trophy finalists, if we know our Heisman Trophy finalists.

And the Rose Bowl that is? Washington State and Oklahoma. Pac 10 vs. Big 12. No. 6 vs. No. 7. Pullman vs. Norman. And, quite possibly, the first non-sellout in 10 years.

A year ago, the Rose Bowl benefited from this bastard system, the reward being the national championship dope-slapping between Miami and Nebraska. Big ratings, Keith Jackson, and the last game of the year. Yeah, life was good, even after you brushed off the few complaints about having the ratty old national title instead of a more honorable match.

It was good because the Rose Bowl figured it would revert to its traditional rivalry this time ... back to, in this case, USC-Iowa.

But no. The Rose Bowl discovered the down side of cooperating with auslanders, adding to the number of resentments the Pac-10 already has claimed at the hands of the BCS.

The Pac-10 can't come out and actively whine, lest it offend one of its members in good standing. Not only that, once the Rose Bowl lost its access to Ohio State (Fiesta) and Iowa (Orange), it was essentially "stuck'' with Oklahoma.

Not that Oklahoma is something you get "stuck'' with. Sooners fans likely will come in numbers and replace all that upper Midwestern money with lower Midwestern money.

But Oklahoma is part of the college football world that the Rose Bowl hasn't had to care about since the Truman Administration, and the West Coast does nothing quite so well as dismiss the toils and traditions of the rest of the universe.

Relentless self-involvement ... Catch It!

	Carson Palmer is having a Heisman-caliber season and USC is the hottest team in college football, but they won't be playing in the Rose Bowl this season.

So the Grandaddy doesn't get what it wants for a change. You just know how that will sit.

None of this would have happened, of course, if the Rose Bowl hadn't given in to those BCS sweet-talkers and given up its cherished independence. This was a clear example of misreading the customers, misreading the athletics directors who concocted the BCS, and misreading the leverage.

Whether exposing Pasadena to the vagaries of an alien conference is a good thing is pretty much up the folks who own homes along the parade route. After all, they'd just broken in Purdue.

But the Pac-10's resignation from the BCS is still four years away, due to contractual requirements. They could complain to Mike Tranghese, the Big East commissioner and BCS coordinator, and did, but Tranghese did what commissioners are hired to do. He drummed his fingers over his lips and made loud noises to drown out the Rose Bowl. He'd gotten hosed, in his mind, when the Michael Vick-engorged Virginia Tech team in 2000 went 10-1 and didn't get a BCS game at all.

What he said, essentially, was this: Make a sentence out of the following words -- Die, You, Then, And, Bitch, A, Payback's.

Ad so it is. The Rose Bowl grits its teeth and gets Oklahoma and Washington State. The Orange Bowl cackles up its sleeve and gets SC-Iowa. And when the BCS deal comes due in four years, the Rose Bowl will remember how this all broke down, and return to its old arrangement with the Pac-10 and Big 10.

It'll take its ratings, its guarantee and Keith Jackson (and yes, he'll still be doing college football then, trust us), and let the Oklahomas of the world fend for themselves.

You know --- the way God meant for it to be when he worked exclusively for the Rose Bowl.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com