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| A tennis club entered this decorated stage coach in the 1893 parade. |
Today
will mark two milestones—the 125th Tournament
of Roses and the 100th football game
associated with the tournament and called the Rose Bowl since 1923.
Confused? Don’t be. We are here
to explain it all.
Pasadena, California in Gay Nineties was a very wealthy suburb
of Los Angeles famed for its posh Millionaire’s Row of showy mansions and
plenty of room for the horsey set to
cavort at the Valley Hunt Club. Like some other older, tonier suburbs of
major cities it was also the home to a prestigious university, in this case the
California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
After
a series of particularly brutal winters back east—think of the legendary Blizzards
of 1887-88, local boosters began to think of ways to lure their wealthy Eastern
friends to sunny Southern California. One way to do that would be to stage a
colorful local celebration that would get picked up and written about in the society pages of Eastern Newspapers.
In
1890 the members of the Valley Hunt Club did just that on New Year’s Day. The event
featured a parade of fashionable carriages festooned with flowers followed by
games on the Town Lot. But no football. The games included polo matches, foot races,
and a tug-of-war. About 2000 of the “best people” showed up.
Sure
enough, the celebration got written up and the following year trainloads of
wealthy folks arrived for a repeat. That
second celebration was officially termed the Tournament of Roses for the first time because of a profusion of
roses used in the decorations—and the fact that an earlier freak frost had
killed the competition that year—Orange blossoms.
In
1893 New Year’s Day fell on a Sunday. Pasadena was already noted for its piety
and for the large, handsome, respectable Protestant
churches which grace the city. Lest
the parade and festivities disrupt Sunday morning services, the event was put
off to the following Monday. It was the beginning
of a “never on Sunday” rule that continues to this day.
The
parade and games became too much for the Hunt Club to manage. For the 1895 event, a new Tournament of Roses Association took
over management. The Association still
exists, housed in the former California mansion of William Wrigley, Jr. after his widow’s death in 1958 and now
officially known as Tournament House. The Association officially considers 1895 as
the founding date of the Tournament, despite the years under Hunt Club
management. Thus the now ballyhooed 125th
anniversary this year.
Under
Association management the parades grew longer and more elaborate. Marching bands were added, the famed matching
equestrian units, and after about
1900, motorized floats. The tradition of a ceremonial Grand Marshall to lead the parade also
was their innovation. In the early years
it was some local leader, often a deep pockets donor to the Association. Later Hollywood
celebrities like Mary Pickford (the
first woman) Shirley Temple, Bob Hope, Walt Disney, and John Wayne; heroes like Dwight
D. Eisenhower and US Air Lines
Flight 159 pilot Captain Chesley Sullenberger; and politicians Richard Nixon and
Earl Warren. Last year Jane Goodall of ape fame
was tapped and today it will be veteran sports caster Vin Scully.
The
Association also added various contests to the actual tournament games,
including ostrich races introduced
by those fun loving Caltech students and a rodeo. But still no football.
Until
1902 when the Association staged an East-West
collegiate football game to raise money for the rest of the events. Playing
in front of grandstands erected on the former Town Lot, now renamed Tournament Park, and the mighty University of Wisconsin Badgers crushed
Stanford 49-0. The demoralized Stanford team cried uncle and
abandoned the game with eight minutes left in the fourth quarter.
The
dashing of West Coast pride meant that football would not return until
1916. But in retrospect officials count
the 1902 game as the first of what would become known as the Rose Bowl
games. In the interim spectacular Ben Hur style chariot races became the main attractions of the Tournament.
In
1905 Pasadena High School student Hallie Woods was elected by her
classmates to become the first Rose
Queen. She sewed her own dress and
helped hand decorate her own float.
Traditionally the Queen and the Princesses
of her Court were selected from
among the daughters of leading citizens.
For many year high school and college students residing anywhere within
the boundaries of Pasadena Community
College District have been eligible to compete for the coveted spots. The Queen and her court receive generous
scholarships, $10,000 clothing allowances, and are busy for months attending
over 1000 events annually in addition to riding in the parade and showing off
their patented parade wave.
It
was something of a culture shock to long time Pasadenans when by the ‘70’s Black, Latino, and Asians began
to make appearances. In recent years
young men, not officially barred, have entered the competition for the Royal
Court, but so far none has been elected.
It is probably only a matter of time until that barrier also falls.
Football
finally returned in 1916 when The State
College of Washington (now Washington
State University) beat Brown
University before about 8,000 fans. The games became annual, always
featuring top eastern teams against the west, except for 1918 and ’19 when
armed forces teams played. Games pitted members of the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC)—but
not always the conference champions—against an Eastern rival. By 1923 they had outgrown Tournament Park.
A
new, modern, horseshoe shaped stadium that could seat 35,000 was built near the
Caltech campus in time for the ’23 game.
Modeled after the modern Yale
Bowl, the stadium and the game were now dubbed the Rose Bowl. It was the first and biggest of all post
season collegiate games and later imitators all identified themselves as Bowl
games regardless of the shape of the stadium.
In
the so called Golden Age of Sports
and with the introduction of Newsreel coverage, national interest in the game grew
year by year, and so did attendance.
Eventually the south end of the field was enclosed for more seating
creating a true bowl. About 95,000 could
find places on backless wooden benches, replaced in the 1969 with aluminum and
upgraded to modern stadium seating with backs in the ‘80’s. For many years it was the largest stadium in
the country. It still has the 8th
largest capacity and is the largest stadium used for an annual bowl game.
All
Rose Bowl games have been played in Pasadena except for one. After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the whole West Coast was thrown
into a panic expecting a Japanese
attack at any time. The game on January
1, 1942 was moved to Duke Stadium in
Durham, North Carolina.
In
1947 the PCC and the Midwestern based Big
Nine inked an exclusive deal for the champions of each league to play the
Rose Bowl game. That agreement was
continued, with a brief interruption when the Athletic Association of Western Universities (AAWU) played the now Big 10 champs
from 1960-63, when the PAC-8 (latter
the PAC-10) took over representing
the west.
That
continued until the introduction of the Bowl
Championship Series (BCS) disrupted traditional rivalries. It also caused, on two occasions, the Rose
Bowl game to be played later than New Year’s Day, which left a sour taste in
the mouths of traditionalists.
This
year the Rose Bowl will return to a now PAC-12 team, Stanford, facing off
against Big 10 champs Michigan State. Then in 2015 the Rose Bowl will become
one of four semi-final games of the new College
Football Playoff every three years, replacing the BCS.
Millions
will tune in today for both the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl. Both have been intimately connected to
broadcasting since the first local radio broadcast of the game in 1926. The first transcontinental radio broadcast of a sporting event followed in
1927, the first local telecast of a college football game in 1948, the first
national telecast of a college football game in 1952 and the first coast-to-coast color telecast of a
collegiate football game in 1962.
The
parade was a natural for television. It
was first aired locally in 1947 and in 1954 was the first event telecast in NBC experimental NTSC color television format nationwide. ABC now
broadcasts the parade and ESPN has
exclusive rights to the game. Starting
in 2013 the parade broke new ground when it was also made available on Xbox Live.
As
for me, if I am not out shoveling snow, I will enjoy the pageantry of the Rose
Parade this morning. I will take a pass
on the game.
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