Updated Sunday, Dec. 7 – 12:23 pm
Oregon will face defending national champion Florida State in the 101st Rose Bowl Game New Year’s Day, the College Football Playoff Selection Committee announced today.
Oregon was second and Florida State third in the final rankings announced today by the 12-person committee. Alabama was ranked first and Ohio State fourth and will meet in the Sugar Bowl, the other semifinal game in the first year of the four-team playoff.
The semifinal winners will advance to the College Football Playoff National Championship, which will be played Jan. 12 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
This is the first time the Rose Bowl matchup has been determined by the committee, which consists of five athletic directors, including Pat Haden of USC, six men with experience as coaches, college athletes, college administrators and journalists and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a former Stanford provost.
Oregon, the Pacific-12 Conference champion is 13-1. Florida State, the Atlantic Coast Conference champion, is 14-0 and has won 29 consecutive games, including the Bowl Championship Series National Championship Game, which was played Jan. 6 at the Rose Bowl.
The Ducks will be making their seventh Rose Bowl Game appearance and fourth since the 1995 game. Oregon is 2-4 in the Rose Bowl Game, including a 45-38 victory over Wisconsin in 2012.
Florida State will be playing for the first time in the Rose Bowl Game, which was limited to teams from what are now the Big Ten and Pacific-12 Conferences between 1947 and 1998.
The Seminoles were not selected for the games played between 1999 and 2014, which continued to be between Big Ten and Pacific-12 Conference teams 11 times, but twice served as the Bowl Championship Series National Championship Game and three other times included teams from other conferences.
Additional tickets for the Rose Bowl Game will go on sale at 8 a.m. Tuesday at ticketmaster.com or by calling Ticketmaster at (800) 653-8000. A maximum of four tickets per person will be available. Individual ticket prices start at $150, plus Ticketmaster handling fees.
The College Football Playoff announced in January 2013 that the Rose Bowl Game and Sugar Bowl would serve as the two semifinals for the College Football Playoff.
The Rose Bowl and the five other participating bowls — the Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Cotton Bowl and Peach Bowl — will be the site of a semifinal game once every three years. During the years it does not host a semifinal, the Rose Bowl Game will have its traditional Pacific-12-Big Ten matchup.