BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - Mike Slive just sank Jim Delany's battleship.
That sounds cute, but it's not exactly true.
What Slive really did by partnering the SEC with the Big 12 to invent a new made-for-television, money-printing postseason game was build his own battleship.
A Rose Bowl by another name.
In one deft move, Slive managed to neutralize Delany's last advantage in the Big Ten commissioner's losing battle for the title of the most powerful man in college sports.
Until Friday, Slive may have had six straight BCS championships, but Delany had the Rose Bowl. Slive may have had two new schools from two new states and two new TV markets preparing to swell his league's ranks to 14, but Delany had the Rose Bowl. Slive may have had most of the best players, coaches and fans in college football under his big tent, but Delany had the Rose Bowl.
Now Slive has his own Rose Bowl. A new-and-improved Rose Bowl. A Rose Bowl whose value will lie not in what it meant in the past but in what it'll mean in the future.
Forget all the details still to be decided. The SEC and the Big 12 have a chance to blow up the old, tired and often corrupt bowl system and start over with this game.
To begin, the two leagues could run it themselves, cutting out the middlemen and putting an end to the dinosaur known as the bowl committee.
Who needs a bowl committee engaging in ethically shaky if not outright illegal political activity? Charging the marching bands exorbitant prices for their seats? Trumpeting its charitable contributions while paying an executive director a king's ransom to spend 364 days preparing to stage one event?
The SEC already knows how to run a high-quality, stand-alone, once-a-year football event in a first-class manner. It's been doing just that with the SEC Championship Game since 1992.
No third-party involvement in the SEC-Big 12 matchup would mean more profit for the two leagues.
Beyond dollars and cents, Slive now has the one thing Delany had and he didn't. A different game, a special game, a game that might matter for different reasons to different people -- not all of them television executives -- even if it's not a national semifinal or championship game. A game that's played at the same time on the same day in the same place every year against an opponent from the same league.
Let Delany and his league honor tradition. Slive and his league do that, too, and then some. They start their own traditions.
Let's be honest. The Rose Bowl ain't what it used to be. The Rose Bowl has become a place to go when the Big Ten and Pac-12 champions have no place to go, at least no place that matters, which has become the case more often than not.
Look at the breakdown of BCS Championship Game appearances by conference since the SEC started its current streak of six straight national titles in 2006.
Big 12: 2.
Big Ten: 2.
Which two-conference alliance is more nationally and competitively relevant? Ha. Is that a trick question?
Slive's Rose Bowl has a chance to not just match Delany's but to better it, and the balance of power will tilt at the site itself.
There may be no scene in college football more stirring than the San Gabriel Mountains rising above the rim of the stadium in Pasadena as the sun sets in the west. For the privilege of witnessing that postcard in person, Delany's teams and their fans have to fly across one or more time zones.
It's a sure bet that the SEC-Big 12 bowl will be played in a state that's part of the SEC's new and expanded footprint. It could be Dallas, the most logical spot, in the futuristic stadium Jerry Jones built for his Cowboys. That would be a perfect fit for this kind of forward-thinking venture.
One day in the future, as the old Rose Bowl in California winds down, concluding its set as a warm-up act for the big fun to come in Texas, the rest of the college football world will look west, shake its head and come to a conclusion.
We won't have a lot of regard for that game.
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