Because those of us interested in, like, a good game get screwed with tradition.
Although nobody is paying attention to my repeated posts regarding the stupid BCS rule that prevented Georgia from going to the Rose, let me say for the final time that it was the BCS rules that prevented you from seeing a better matchup in the Rose Bowl and not tradition. The Rose was barred from picking Ohio State (National Championship Game), LSU (National Championship Game), VA Tech (Orange), Oklahoma (Fiesta), Georgia (Sugar). That leaves them with Missouri (a day after they were drubbed by Oklahoma), Kansas (less deserving than Missouri) and Hawaii (whose WAC conference gets no respect and so killing them would impress nobody). I wish we could have seen USC play in the National Championship Game, but since Ohio State had one less loss (even though they had a very weak out-of-conference schedule) and LSU didn’t lose to anybody as weak as Stanford, that was not to be.