Rose Bowl Game
The Rose Bowl Game is an annual American college football bowl game, traditionally played on January 1 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. When New Year's Day falls on a Sunday, the game is played on Monday, January 2.
Nicknamed "The Granddaddy of Them All" by broadcaster Keith Jackson, it was the first postseason football game ever established. The Rose Bowl Game was first played in 1902 as the Tournament East–West football game, and has been played annually since 1916. Since 1945, it has been the highest attended college football bowl game. The game is a part of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association's "America's New Year Celebration", which also includes the historic Rose Parade. Winners of the game receive the Leishman Trophy, named for former Tournament of Roses presidents, William L. Leishman and Lathrop K. Leishman who played an important part in the history of this game.
Starting in 1917, the Rose Bowl Game selected a team from the predecessor of the Pac-12 Conference each year along with a team from the eastern half of the country. In 1947, the Rose Bowl Game began its traditional matchup of the conference champions from the Big Ten Conference and the predecessor of the Pac-12 Conference, which continued to 2023, with some exceptions.
In 1998, the Rose Bowl Game joined with several other bowls to create the Bowl Championship Series to produce an undisputed national champion in college football. This marked the first time the Rose Bowl agreed to release the Big Ten or Pac-12 champion to play in a national championship game if they were ranked #1 or #2. The Rose Bowl Game served as the national championship game in 2002 and 2006. The Rose Bowl stadium and the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association hosted the BCS National Championship Game in 2010 and 2014, in addition to the regular Rose Bowl Game.
In 2014, the Rose Bowl, along with the other "New Year's Six" bowls, became a part of the College Football Playoff. As part of the four team playoff from 2014 to 2023, the Rose Bowl served as a semifinal game in 2015, 2018, and 2021. When not serving as a semifinal, the Rose Bowl featured the best available teams from the Big Ten and Pac-12 conferences.
With the expansion of the College Football Playoff to twelve teams in the 2024–25 season, the Rose Bowl will serve as either a quarterfinal or semifinal each year. It served as a quarterfinal in 2025 and will do so again in 2026. When serving as a quarterfinal, the Rose Bowl will host the Big Ten champion, if seeded in the top four. When serving as a semifinal, the game will be played one week after New Year's Day, and, if the Big Ten champion is one of the top two seeds, the team will be assigned to the Rose Bowl.
History
Originally titled the "Tournament East–West football game", the first Rose Bowl was played on January 1, 1902, starting the tradition of New Year's Day bowl games. The football game was added in 1902 to help fund the cost of the Rose Parade. The inaugural game featured Fielding H. Yost's dominating 1901 Michigan team, representing the East, which crushed a previously 3–1–2 team from Stanford University, representing the West, by a score of 49–0 after Stanford quit in the third quarter. Michigan finished the season 11–0 and was crowned the national champion. Yost had been Stanford's coach the previous year. The game was so lopsided that for the next thirteen years, the Tournament of Roses officials ran chariot races, ostrich races, and other various events instead of football. But, on New Year's Day 1916, football returned to stay as the State College of Washington defeated Brown University in the first of what was thereafter an annual tradition.Tournament Park and Rose Bowl stadium
Before the Rose Bowl was built, games were played in Pasadena's Tournament Park, approximately southeast of the current Rose Bowl stadium, near the campus of Caltech. Tournament Park was found to be unsuitable for the increasingly large crowds gathering to watch the game and a new, permanent home for the game was commissioned.The Rose Bowl stadium, designed after the Yale Bowl in New Haven, hosted its first "Rose Bowl" game on January 1, 1923. The name of the stadium was alternatively "Tournament of Roses Stadium" or "Tournament of Roses Bowl", until the name "Rose Bowl" was settled on before the 1923 game.
The stadium seating has been reconfigured several times since its original construction in 1922. For many years, the Rose Bowl stadium had the largest football stadium capacity in the United States, eventually being surpassed by Michigan Stadium in 1998. The maximum stated seating capacity was 104,594 from 1972 to 1997. Capacity was lowered after the 1998 game; the 2006 game, which was also the BCS championship game, attracted a crowd of 93,986; and there were 94,118 spectators at the 2011 game between TCU and Wisconsin. As of 2012, the Rose Bowl is number seven on the list of American football stadiums by capacity with a current official seating capacity of 92,542 and is still the largest stadium that hosts post-season bowl games. The Rose Bowl is also the only CFP bowl game that is held in a non-NFL stadium.
Team selection 1916–1946
In the game's early years, except during World War I, the Rose Bowl always pitted a team—not necessarily the conference champion—from the Pacific Coast Conference, the predecessor of the current Pac-12 Conference, against an opponent from the Eastern U.S. During the last two years of World War I, teams from military bases met in the Rose Bowl. During its history, a number of notable matchups have been made with the top football teams and top coaches of the time. These include the 1925 game, with Knute Rockne's Notre Dame and their Four Horsemen against "Pop" Warner's Stanford; the 1926 edition was the Alabama Crimson Tide's win over Washington, and 1940 featured Howard Jones' USC Trojans against Bob Neyland's Tennessee Volunteers. During this period, there were ten games in which undefeated teams were matched.World War II – 1942 venue change to Durham, North Carolina
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and a series of attacks on West Coast shipping beginning on December 18, there were concerns about a possible Japanese attack on the West Coast. The Rose Parade, with a million watchers, and the Rose Bowl, with 90,000 spectators, were presumed to be ideal targets for the Japanese. Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt recommended that the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl festivities be cancelled. The Rose Bowl committee originally planned to cancel the game. On December 16, Duke University invited the game and Oregon State to Duke's home stadium in Durham, North Carolina. After the 1942 Allied victory in the Battle of Midway and the end of the Japanese offensives in the Pacific Theater during 1942, it was deemed that a large portion of the West Coast was no longer vulnerable to attack, and the Rose Bowl Game continued on in the Rose Bowl stadium. The Tournament of Roses parade itself still was not held in 1943 because of the war.Big Nine–PCC agreement
During World War II, many college football schools had dropped some conference opponents and instead played football against local military base teams. Many colleges could not even field teams because of the draft and manpower requirements. After the war was over, demobilization and the G.I. Bill enabled returning servicemen to attend college. The 1946 season was the first true post-war college football season with travel restrictions lifted and civilian college opponents returning to schedules.The Big Nine and PCC were of the same accord when it came to treating players as amateurs, as compared to the semi-professional status that the Southern Universities proposed. Also, the Big Nine and PCC both had the same attitudes towards desegregation and allowing African-Americans to play football. Many other universities were still segregated. None of the Southeastern Conference schools had an African American athlete until 1966. The Cotton Bowl, Orange Bowl, and Sugar Bowl would not be integrated until 1948, 1955, and 1956 respectively.
The Big Nine agreed in 1946, after eight years of negotiating over payments, rules, and ticket allocations, to a five-year exclusive deal with the Rose Bowl to send the conference champion to meet the PCC champion. UCLA, USC, Minnesota and Illinois all voted against it. The 1947 Rose Bowl, with UCLA meeting Illinois, was the first game under this agreement.
Big Ten–AAWU/Pac-8/10/12 agreement
When the PCC dissolved prior to the 1959 season following a pay-for-play scandal in 1958, there was no official agreement in force. The Tournament of Roses selected from the former members of PCC and invited Washington, the first champion of the newly formed Athletic Association of Western Universities, to play Big Ten champion Wisconsin in the 1960 Rose Bowl. The Big Ten authorized its members to accept any Rose Bowl invitation at their discretion.The AAWU signed an agreement with the Rose Bowl that remained in force from the 1961 Rose Bowl until the advent of the BCS era in 1998. In 1962, after Minnesota changed its vote against pursuing a new agreement, a Big Ten agreement was finalized, which went into effect with the 1963 Rose Bowl and lasted until the BCS era.
While the Big Ten supplied the "East" representative and the PCC, AAWU, or Pac-8/10 supplied the "West" representative from the 1947 Rose Bowl to the BCS era, an "exclusive" Rose Bowl agreement did not exist throughout this period. In particular, the Big Ten was not part of any agreement for at least the 1961 and 1962 games. In particular, the 1961 Big Ten champion Ohio State, declined the invitation to play in the 1962 game without penalty.
The AAWU used "Big Five", "Big Six", and "Pacific-8" as unofficial nicknames. It officially adopted the "Pacific-8" name for the 1968 season. The name changed to "Pacific-10" with the arrival of Arizona and Arizona State in 1978, its last official name change prior to the formation of the BCS in 1998. The Big Ten Conference retained the same name throughout this period, even though it had eleven members by the start of the BCS era because of the addition of Penn State in 1990.
Both conferences had a "no repeat" rule in force for a number of years. Under this rule, any team that had appeared in the Rose Bowl game the previous season could not go, even if they were the conference champion. The notable exception was Minnesota playing in the 1961 and 1962 games during the period when the conference agreements were in a state of flux. Second-ranked Ohio State did not participate because its faculty council voted it down, allowing Minnesota to return. The PCC's rule went into effect following California's third straight defeat in 1951 and ended with conference's disbandment in the summer of 1959; it affected the 1955 and 1958 games. The Big Ten abolished their rule in 1972; it had recently affected the 1966 game. Southern California played in four consecutive Rose Bowl games from 1967 to 1970; Ohio State played in four straight from 1973 to 1976.
Both conferences also had "exclusive agreements" with the Rose Bowl game, in the sense that member schools were not allowed to play in any other bowl game. Both conferences abolished this rule before the 1975 NCAA Division I football season. As a result, Michigan and USC were allowed to play in the 1976 Orange Bowl and the 1975 Liberty Bowl, respectively.