The official name of Iowa's match-up against Stanford on January 1 is the Rose Bowl Game Presented by Northwestern Mutual.

But since Bob Bowlsby was previously the athletic director at both schools, maybe a different moniker fits this season.

Rose Bowlsby, anyone?

The current Big 12 commissioner hired both Iowa's Kirk Ferentz and Stanford's David Shaw, the game's two head coaches, during his tenures at the two schools. He was athletic director at Iowa from 1990 to 2006 before holding the same position at Stanford from 2006 until 2012.

"I can't help but have some mixed emotions about this game," Bowlsby said.

He's a native Iowan, and there are a combined 22 degrees from the University of Iowa in his family, so one might expect the Bowlsby clan to lean in the Hawkeyes' favor. But it's not that simple: One of Bowlsby's sons earned his MBA from Stanford and works for the Pac-12 Networks, so some lines in the sand are appearing.

"It'll be hard telling what side they'll all be on," Bowlsby laughed.

Even those with direct academic ties to one of the participating schools are likely to be conflicted. Bowlsby hired Ferentz at Iowa in 1998, and the Hawkeyes' football program went to five consecutive New Year's Day bowl games at the time of his departure to Stanford. The Cardinal enjoyed even more success: Bowlsby hired Jim Harbaugh early on during his time on the Farm, and then promoted Shaw in 2011 as the program asserted itself as a national power.

So Bowlsby enjoyed plentiful success -- and resulting family investment -- at both stops.

"I was at Iowa for 16 years, so all my kids grew up with the Hawkeyes," he said. "But they all take great pride in Stanford, too, so they'll probably be conflicted like I now am."

While Bowlsby might be torn between whom he'd like to see win this game, he does admit that he's ultimately proud to see two of his past hires leading the charge to the Granddaddy of Them All. He still speaks very highly of both Ferentz and Shaw.

"They're both people of such high integrity," Bowlsby said. "They're both very emotional and both very soft-spoken. They're both gentlemen. I very much like the way they conduct themselves. I have to admit to being proud of the manner in which they both run their programs."

Bowlsby thinks that the toughest part about captaining a sprawling Division I ship is the required balancing act between multiple arms of the operation, and he sees many similarities between Ferentz and Shaw when it comes to their CEO-like successes.

"It's the assistant coaches you hire, it's the strength and conditioning people you bring in, it's the manner in which you deliver sports medicine to student-athletes, it's how you make sure academic support is properly delivered," Bowlsby said. "There are a hundred decisions that get made to make sure football collaborates with the rest of the school to yield positive results, and these guys both understand that...They’re both program builders, people that believe in developing players and coaches and building the program from the inside. It takes a lot of bricks and mortar to make it reputable from one year to the next."

It requires even more of a foundation to make sure that the entire operation culminates in a Rose Bowl appearance, but Ferentz and Shaw have both conquered that challenge. They'll be on opposite sidelines in Pasadena as a result.

So let the Rose Bowlsby begin.

"Bob has a special place in my heart, and he always will," Shaw smiled. "But I think this is going to be a really difficult game for him to watch."