TRADITION: College Football's Rose Bowl and Prime Rib = the Beef Bowl?!

American society has so few ties to custom and ritual in this day and age.  That's why it's so interesting to see how sports and athleticism is the one area where tradition is not only expected, but it is also honoured and perpetuated.

An article from the Los Angeles Times wrote about the Beef Bowl, a five decades-long tradition of serving prime rib dinners in a fine dining setting to players of both teams competing in the Rose Bowl (on separate days, of course!). The two teams are invited in to a Los Angeles establishment to communally feast on a prime rib dinner with Yorkshire pudding, potatoes, salad etc.  Inevitably, the event turns into a eating competition each year.  (Here's a tip for you wagerers: supposedly, the team with the most amount of meat consumed is statistically significantly shown to become the winner of the Rose Bowl game...)

Photo by Todd Wawrychuk of ESPN.com

[PLEASE NOTE:  For the record, i have been a vegetarian for over 20 years, and do not personally approve of such overt displays of excess when it comes to something like food and hunger...but i DO enjoy tradition and so i wanted to share this story with you!]