re: The Top 10 Most Important Bowl Games in History

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Since then, the Rose has invited some SEC teams. Why has the Sugar never invited a PAC team?

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The Rose Bowl stopped inviting Southern teams in 1946, when it adopted the "Big Nine-PCC" arrangement.

Although the Sugar Bowl never invited a current PAC-12 member (to my knowledge), they did invite Santa Clara in 1937 and 1938, as well as Saint Mary's in 1946.

Frankly, I highly doubt that any PCC (now the PAC) had an interest in playing a bowl game in the South. Travel was expensive and time-consuming, and it was a source of embarrassment for Ivy League squads when Southern teams first became competitive in the late 1920's. (Yale was the first team to visit a Southern university, in 1929... and that was only because Yale and Georgia had some shared history. Before that, Southern teams did all the traveling to other areas of the country.)

In short, most Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast teams had nothing to gain by playing in the Sugar Bowl. And, of course, Southern segregation became a consideration in later years.

LSU vs. Alabama BCS title game could very well be on that list because it will be the game that ended the BCS as we know it and moved college football to a playoff-like system.

Maybe more of an honorable mention.