January 1, 1926, 100 years ago: The Rose Bowl is played, at the stadium of the same name in the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena, California.
As always -- until the Bowl Championship Series era, anyway -- the game featured what was considered the top team on the West Coast. In the 1925 season, that team was the University of Washington, coached by Enoch Bagshaw. They were 10-0-1. They had victories of 108-0, 80-7, 64-2, 59-0 and 56-0.
But midway through the season, they began to slow down. They went to Lincoln, Nebraska, and the University of Nebraska held them to a 6-6 tie. They beat archrival Washington State away, 23-0. But their last 3 regular-season games got progressively closer: They beat Stanford, 13-0 at home; California, 7-0 away; and Oregon, 15-14 at home. Nevertheless, they got the Rose Bowl bid.
For the 1st time, the game invited a Southern team. They invited Tulane University, of New Orleans, who were 9-0-1. But they declined the invitation, because the time off needed for the game would interfere with academics. So the University of Alabama, coached by Wallace Wade, were invited.
'Bama went 10-0. They beat Union, 53-0; Birmingham-Southern, 50-7; Louisiana State, 42-0 away; Sewanee, 27-0 at Rickwood Field in Birmingham; Georgia Tech, 7-0 away; Mississippi A&M, 6-0; Kentucky, 31-0 at Rickwood; Florida, 34-0 at the Cramton Bowl in Montgomery; and Georgia, 27-0 at Rickwood on Thanksgiving Day. The Crimson Tide did not slow down.
(Union University, of Jackson, Tennessee now play in NCAA Division II. Birmingham-Southern, not to be confused with the University of Alabama at Birmingham or Southern University, now play in Division III. Sewanee, of Sewanee, Tennessee, also now play in Division III. Mississippi A&M became Mississippi State in 1932.)
But the South was looked down upon by football fans in the rest of the country, due to their country roots. Alabama took the train west from Tuscaloosa to Pasadena to find themselves rated as 3-touchdown underdogs.
Washington scored a touchdown in the 1st quarter, and another in the 2nd quarter, and led 12-0 at halftime. Notably, after both touchdowns, the extra point was missed. This was the dawn of radio broadcasting, but there were, as yet, no national radio networks. A large crowd gathered in downtown Montgomery, Alabama's State capital, to listen to the play-by-play, received via telegraph, announced to them from the office building of the newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser. The news didn't get any better as halftime arrived, so many people gave up and went home.
They shouldn't have. Alabama drove down the field in the 3rd quarter, and Allison "Pooley" Hubert scored on a 1-yard run. On their next drive, Gale Gillis threw a 59-yard touchdown pass to All-American back Johnny Mack Brown. Alabama had the lead. Still in the 3rd quarter, Hubert threw a 30-yard touchdown pass to Brown.
Johnny Mack Brown
In the 4th quarter, Washington's All-American back, George "Wildcat" Wilson threw a 27-yard touchdown pass to George Guttormsen. Using a different kicker, the extra point was made, and Washington were within 20-19. But the Huskies could get no closer, as the Crimson Tide defense held.
Alabama had won. They were the definitive National Champions, the 1st Southern team to become so. This game became known as "The Game That Changed the South." Keith Dunnavant, an Alabama graduate who wrote a biography of later coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, said in an interview for a film history of Southern football:
Alabama's victory was a landmark moment. It said, "Football is transcendent for us." They win this stunning upset, they get back on that train, and they take a long time to get back to Alabama. By the time it reaches the South, you have people lined up at the train stations, cheering, because Alabama's victory was a victory for them. It was the first time that the South had claimed superiority in anything since the war.
Meaning the Civil War. Historian Andy Doyle, a professor at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and a graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB, the Blazers -- not the Crimson Tide), was interviewed for that same documentary, and said:
This Rose Bowl was at once a vindication of the South, and sticking it to "those Yankees." But it was also kind of a way of saying, "We are not this ragtag redneck rabble. We are not the barefoot, sharecropping, hookworm-infested South of the national image. We're just like you.
Later in 1926, NBC, the National Broadcasting Company, was formed. On January 1, 1927, they made the Rose Bowl their 1st national radio broadcast. Alabama had been invited again, but, this time, Stanford University, led by Ernie Nevers, held them to a 7-7 tie. Eastern polls selected Alabama as the National Champion, while Western polls selected Stanford.
Johnny Mack Brown went on to become a notable actor, especially in Western films. He lived until 1974. Wallace Wade left Alabama after the 1930 season, and became the head coach at Duke University. He lived until 1986.
Today, Duke's stadium is named Wallace Wade Stadium. Alabama's stadium, built in 1929, is named for 2 men, and Wade is not one of them. They are George H. Denny, the University's president from 1912 to 1932; and Paul William Bryant, who would play for them in the 1933, '34 and '35 seasons, and was their head coach from 1958 to 1982.
Bowl games weren't a thing yet, and only one other college football game was played on that New Year's Day 1926. Oddly, it involved Washington's arch-rivals, Washington State. They lost to the University of Hawaii, 20-11 at Moiliili Field in Honolulu.
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