> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # SM loses in 2005 Rose Bowl match-up - URL: https://www.smdp.com/sm-loses-in-2005-rose-bowl-match-up/ - Published: 2004-12-30T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-23T05:54:53.000Z - Author: John Wood - Tags: Education, Downtown, #archive-import *The picture would be different if UC Berkeley were playing* DOWNTOWN — Add Santa Monica hotel operators, merchants and restaurateurs to the growing horde upset by the way college football’s top teams are matched up in the postseason. Had UC Berkeley’s 10-1 team gone to the Jan. 1 Rose Bowl, as many believe it should, Santa Monica would have been bedecked in Golden Bear blue and gold this weekend. Instead, the University of Michigan will face off against the University of Texas, and Santa Monica will be left out in the rain. Cal staffers, alumni and fans planned to stay in local hotels, had they been invited to the Rose Bowl game in Pasadena, officials said. Instead, a new computer formula crafted by the Bowl Championship Series scored Cal.0129 below the University of Texas and matched Cal instead with No. 23 Texas Tech. The two teams will compete in the Holiday Bowl in San Diego on Friday. While some University of Michigan and University of Texas alumni have chosen to stay in Santa Monica hotels, the loss of Cal business is palpable, tourism officials said Wednesday. “It’s always a challenge and a desire of ours to host Rose Bowl teams in a substantial way in Santa Monica,” said Ben Franz-Knight, executive director of the Pier Restoration Corp., a city-funded organization that manages the pier. “What was really disappointing for us this year was that Cal did have a lot of their fans and alumni staying in Santa Monica... They had committed and were ready to have a pep rally on the pier.” Santa Monica has played host to some wild Rose Bowl parties in previous years. Pep rallies on the pier for Nebraska and Washington State before earlier bowl games have drawn as many as 10,000 people. One year, both the mayor of Madison, Wisc., and the governor of that state discovered they were in line for the same bar on the Third Street Promenade, City Councilman Bob Holbrook said. The attraction, Holbrook added, is more than just the beach. “Location, location, location,” he said. “There’s movie theaters. There’s restaurants. There’s shopping. There’s New Year’s Eve. It’s just an easy walk around from your hotel to do a lot of lot things.” Disappointment over the BCS rank-ings, which determine where the top college football teams play in the post-season, is nothing new in Santa Monica. Last year, officials said they lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue when top-ranked University of Southern California lost its bid for the Sugar Bowl and instead played in the Rose Bowl. Had the team traveled east, another team would have headed west, and the difference was as many as 45,000 traveling fans, with money to spend. Despite the loss of Cal business, Santa Monica still will benefit from the annual draw for the Rose Bowl and Rose Parade. Several alumni are staying at Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel and Le Merigot, and tourism officials are distributing pom-poms with University of Michigan and University of Texas team colors. With the pom-poms comes a free ride on the pier Ferris wheel, Franz- Knight said. “They are here, just not in the numbers that we’ve seen in the past,” he added. “Most years... at least the band comes into town, because they want to walk out on the pier and they want to play out over the Pacific at the end, because that’s something the band always enjoyed.” With hotel rooms reserved immediately after the bowl schedule was released weeks ago, some local hotel operators said foul weather is now a more pressing concern. “We’re getting a lot of cancellations because of the weather forecast,” said Francois Khoury, general manager of the Doubletree Guest Suites. “Cancellations all over the place... People come to Santa Monica, although it’s higher in price, because of the location, the ocean.” The Doubletree for years hosted a band from one of the visiting Rose Bowl teams. Losing that business, Khoury said, amounts to about $250,000 in lost revenue. Still, about 75 percent of Doubletree rooms are booked for the coming weekend, as opposed to between 30 percent and 50 percent of rooms for the rest of the season, according to Khoury. Officials from the Santa Monica Convention and Visitors Bureau, a city-funded nonprofit organization charged with tracking and improving tourism, said they couldn’t provide any details about booking trends but said they were optimistic occupancy would improve. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/123004-02_01.jpg) pep rallies are old hat in Santa Monica, but not this year. (Photo: File photo Rose Bowl) *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 30, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/123004.pdf?ref=smdp.com)