Rose Bowl Game starts an hour earlier on Jan. 1 – Press Enterprise

Amid the booming bass drums of the marching bands, the majesty of rose-covered floats, the smiles and the waves, and the expected rain, there’s one other thing: The Rose Bowl Game — a College Football Playoff quarterfinal between top-seeded Big Ten champion Indiana and ninth-seeded Alabama – will start an hour earlier this year, at 1 p.m.

The change, while not a huge issue for those watching from home on the West Coast, is a big deal for Bowl game advertisers and promoters who want to maximize peak TV and streaming audience while they can on Thursday afternoon into the evening.

The logistical tweak is among an array of changes brought to managing the Tournament of Roses in an era of shifts for college football and the media rights that go along with the games.

Moving the game an hour earlier was brought about by an attempt to capture advertising revenue from the game being broadcast by ESPN earlier on the East Coast, said Tournament of Roses President Mark Leavens.

Ultimately, ESPN broadcasts six bigtime bowl games on Thursday: The New Year’s Six, as they are known, are the Rose, Sugar, Orange, Cotton, Peach and Fiesta bowls, which serve as College Football Playoff (CFP) quarterfinal or semifinal games.

The time change is an effort “to make the schedule work better,” said Tournament CEO David Eads, who said the move was made after working with the College Football Playoff and partners in the college conferences.

It was a change a few years in the making.

Three years ago, as the CFP was looking to expand the playoff to 12 teams, it was the Tournament and the CFP still negotiating over issues such as the time of the Rose Bowl Game in one of the most lucrative time windows in college sports – afternoon on New Year’s Day.

The Tournament was seeking to hold on to its long-held 2 p.m. start time for when the stadium hosts semifinal games. It reportedly caused a measure of frustration with the CFP, with concerns that Rose Bowl organizers were trying to dictate when big-time bowl games were played across the country.

“You start out with the Rose Parade, and on the same day you have the Rose Bowl Game to celebrate the start of the New Year,” Laura Farber, chair of the Rose Bowl Management Committee, is quoted as saying at the time. “It’s not only tradition, it’s part of the brand, and who we are, and what has been built since 1903.”