In a way, this will be sort of difficult to admit, but a large portion of my sports-watching career was spent struggling to consider that the idea of going to the Rose Bowl – or any BCS game that wasn’t the national championship – was as exciting of a thing as people made it out to be.

And before you land on me like an anvil, note the past tense.

For the longest time I couldn’t help but feel the Rose Bowl – or, again, any bowl game that was not the national championship game – was merely a consolation prize. It was like in youth soccer tournaments when everyone would be given a tournament-issued ribbon afterwards while two teams got to play for a trophy and one kept it. It was like saying, “Everybody wins! But this other team wins more! Thank you for playing!'”

Those sentiments have slowly receded ever since Bret Bielema began wielding teams with flashy top-10 tags on them. As a born-and-raised Wisconsinite, I was too young to fully experience Barry Alvarez’s teams, but once Rose Bowl possibilities seemed real again with Bielema, I began to really sense a divide between Pasadena and whatever Florida and Texas had to offer (outside of the Orange Bowl).

But even when I was standing in section 112 of the 97th Rose Bowl, the thought still creeped in my head – especially when Wisconsin lost – that it was just a consolation prize, anyway.

I can say now, though, without reservation, that I have since exterminated that idea, and anyone else who feels what I felt should do the same.

I just had to realize that college football is a game of inequality and is, therefore, not always a game about winning a championship. Due to its structure, this game is sometimes just about winning respect – or salvaging what’s left of it.

Don’t take this as a validation of the nefarious BCS’s existence. It’s a crappy state of affairs for any sport to be in. It’s just that dollars and cents keep the current design in place. And it would be hard to escape the annual controversies of worthiness. Four- or eight-team playoffs would still leave teams hanging and spark whines of disrespect.

And in this game where respect is real currency, playing in the Rose Bowl is the next-best thing to playing in a national championship. It is a game drooling with prestige, and if you’re a sports nerd, or nerd in general, you have to love what it offers.

For starters, what a thrill it must be to play in not only college football’s oldest bowl game – the 98th edition comes this year – but to play in a stadium designated a National Historic Landmark, an ultra-rarity in the world of sports.

In all of college football, there are three other stadiums with such a sticker – the Yale Bowl, Harvard Stadium and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Outside of college football, I couldn’t find any other NFL stadium that holds major sporting events.

Not even Fenway Park, Wrigley Field or Lambeau Field can claim such regality as the Rose Bowl. For a stadium to remain relevant these days, it’s forced to either renovate or be wiped off the face of the earth. Soldier Field’s NFL tag was removed as a direct result of its spaceship-esque renovation, and if you thought old Yankee Stadium would have been fitting for such an honor, well, it doesn’t exist anymore.

Wisconsin will play on a field that has hosted five Super Bowls and events for two summer Olympics, the 1994 FIFA World Cup (including the championship game) and the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup – also including the championship game, which the United States won.

This is a field where, literally, some of the world’s best athletes have played on, and now, for the second consecutive year, the Badgers will be aligned with them.

No, Wisconsin wasn’t selected by anyone to play in this game. It earned its ticket instead. Yeah, voters might not have been all too kind to the Badgers this year, but that doesn’t hide the fact that Wisconsin will still be earning some princely respect for appearing in this game against a worthy opponent in Oregon.

You can’t attack the kind of history the Rose Bowl has in relation to its BCS counterparts, and they benefit more from people calling them prestigious, whereas the Rose Bowl is by its own nature.

All you have to do is peer across Lake Michigan and compare what we have to what Michigan State has. The Spartans played a fine season (and admit it, you like Kirk Cousins and wouldn’t mind seeing him in the Rose Bowl), but they’ll (undeservedly) be an afterthought on Jan. 2 when they appear in the Outback Bowl.

The Badgers, meanwhile, will be playing in a sumptuous scene in southern California, basking in the glow of prestige – which is really what everyone else is out to get.

Elliot is a senior majoring in journalism. What are your thoughts on Rose Bowl compared to other bowl games? Speak your thoughts by emailing [email protected] or tweeting @BHeraldSports or @elliothughes12.