How the College Football Playoff Ended a Rose Bowl Week Tradition

[Updated]  For nearly seven decades, the week before the Rose Bowl Game unfolded according to a distinctly Southern California script. The visiting teams would arrive with days to spare. They would pose with Mickey Mouse at Disneyland. And they would enjoy prime rib at Lawry’s in Beverly Hills, a restaurant connected to Pasadena through the local family that founded it, for a dinner tradition older than even the Super Bowl itself.

But things have changed. Last year, Ohio State and Oregon arrived on a Sunday and played on a Wednesday. This year, the Hoosiers and Crimson Tide arrived yesterday and play on Thursday.

Under the new College Football Playoffs-managed Rose Bowl Game timetable, there is no time for Disneyland. No time for Lawry’s. No time for local tradition.

“It was Disneyland and Lawry’s The Prime Rib that were the last to go from what they told us are the ‘off campus’ opportunities,” said Ryan Wilson, CEO of Lawry’s Restaurants. “We’re sad to see it go.”

The Beef Bowl—founded in 1956 by Wilson’s grandfather, Pasadenan Richard N. Frank—will not take place for the second consecutive year.

But the cancellation represents something larger than one restaurant losing one annual event. It marks the effective end of Rose Bowl week as generations of players, alumni, and Angelenos knew it: a leisurely celebration of college football, Southern California hospitality, and civic pride.

That version of the Rose Bowl Game is gone. What remains is a quarterfinal.

For most of its history, the Rose Bowl Game was a local production with national appeal. The Tournament of Roses—a Pasadena institution—organized not just a football game but a week of events that welcomed visiting teams to Southern California. The game’s identity was inseparable from its setting: the San Gabriel Mountains as backdrop, the parade down Colorado Boulevard, the rituals that made New Year’s Day in Pasadena feel like nowhere else.

The Beef Bowl was part of that fabric. Richard N. Frank started the tradition Beef Bowl shortly after becoming Lawry’s president, hosting Rose Bowl teams for prime rib dinners at his Beverly Hills restaurant. The Tournament of Roses inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2005, crediting him as the event’s founder. By the time the tradition ended, it had outlasted all but seven bowl games in the country.

Rose Bowl teams also visited Disneyland annually beginning in 1959—just four years after the park opened—according to Tournament of Roses officials, though some sources cite an earlier start in 1955. The visits became iconic images: hulking linebackers in mouse ears, head coaches shaking hands with Goofy.

These weren’t just photo opportunities. They were economic drivers for alumni associations, gathering points for far-flung fan bases, and proof that bowl season was about more than football: It was about place.

The College Football Playoff’s expansion from four teams to twelve, which took effect for the 2024 season, did not merely alter the Rose Bowl’s competitive significance. It uncoupled the foundation that bowl-week traditions required.

Under the old system, teams learned of their Rose Bowl selection five to six weeks in advance. They arrived in Southern California roughly a week before kickoff. That cushion allowed Lawry’s to book adequate space, alumni groups to organize travel, and players to experience something beyond practice facilities and hotel ballrooms.

Under the new structure, teams that advance could play as many as four games before the national championship. The schedule, designed to accommodate the bracket’s demands, left no room for leisurely prime rib dinners.

“It’s absolutely from our experience because of the lack of time now with the college teams and particularly getting the players themselves into the restaurant with such little notice,” Wilson said. “And so no, the feedback we’ve received through a good relationship, a continuing relationship with the Tournament of Roses is that the teams don’t have the bandwidth for this event.”

Bandwidth. The word hung in the air—corporate vocabulary describing the death of a tradition his grandfather started in simpler times.

What makes the Beef Bowl’s demise particularly striking is what it already survived. The 2020 Rose Bowl, a CFP semifinal, was relocated to Arlington, Texas, amid pandemic restrictions. The 2021 event was canceled one day before it was scheduled to begin as the Omicron variant surged; Lawry’s packaged and delivered takeout meals to players instead.

The tradition resumed in 2022 and 2023. Michigan and Alabama made the Disneyland stop on December 27, 2023, and visited Lawry’s the following two days. It appeared the old rhythms had returned.

Then came the expanded playoff, and with it, the realization that COVID had been a temporary disruption. The new scheduling reality was permanent.

Tournament of Roses officials have tried to frame the changes diplomatically. Rose Bowl Game spokesperson Karen Linhart told City News Service that “some of the traditional bowl week events for the Rose Bowl Game are unable to take place” but emphasized that Lawry’s and Disneyland “continue to be great partners of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses.”

CEO David Eads was more direct about the practical constraints.

“We really want to showcase Los Angeles and Southern California,” Eads told the Columbus Dispatch. “We just have to do it in a ballroom instead of taking them to some of our iconic locations.”

Wilson, for his part, insists the Beef Bowl’s story is not over.

“And no, I don’t think the Beef Bowl’s done at all,” he said. “What it’s going to become, I can’t quite say — but I know that there is a great tradition that’s worthy … of continuing to invest in.”

Wilson pointed to the number of inquiries from alumni groups—fans who remember the tradition and want to know why it disappeared.

“We’re now seeing interest from some of the alumni groups — why isn’t this happening? Can we participate somehow?” Wilson said.

Whether alumni dinners could replicate the atmosphere of hosting actual Rose Bowl teams remains to be seen. The original Beef Bowl derived its magic from proximity: college football’s biggest stars, days before the biggest game of their lives, carving into prime rib at a Beverly Hills landmark. An alumni gathering, however festive, would be a different thing entirely.

Still, Wilson—the fourth generation of his family to lead Lawry’s—seems unwilling to let his grandfather’s legacy just dissolve away.

“Know that there’s a thread of an opportunity there and certainly a legacy, very proud legacy for my grandfather since 1956, that I’d like to reconnect the dots despite the changes that are outside of our control, with college football playoffs.”