The Rose Bowl Game is an annual American college football bowl game, traditionally played on January 1 (New Year's Day) 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.Carter Williams, How the Rose Bowl became 'The Granddaddy of Them All' KSL.com, December 31, 2021 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.NCAA Division 1 football records book. NCAA, 2007 Edition, pages 296–302 Major Bowl Game Attendance 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 hosted the Big Ten champion, if seeded in the top four. Beginning with the 2027 edition, the Rose Bowl Game no longer has a conference tie-in.
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.Mary L. Grady, Mercer Island High School Marching Band to march in 2012 Tournament of Roses Parade , Mercer Island Reporter, September 24, 2010 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.Bowl Games: College Football's Greatest Tradition, by Robert Ours, 2004, pgs. 3-4 But, on New Year's Day 1916, football returned to stay as the State College of Washington (now Washington State University) 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."Huge Flagstaff For Pasadena. Enormous Steel Pole 122 and ½ Feet Long Will Stand in Rose Bowl". Los Angeles Times, December 10, 1922. Monday afternoon at 2 o'clock the new flagstaff of the Tournament of Roses stadium, now called the Rose Bowl, will be put in place with suitable ceremony under auspices of the Pasadena Lions Club, donor of the pole.
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.University of Michigan Official Athletics site – Michigan Stadium 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.Tournament of Roses Parade FAQs . In 2006, attendance was 93,986. 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 (PCC), 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."ROSE BOWL GAME CALLED OFF", San Antonio Light, December 14, 1941, pB-1"Forbidding Crowds". Los Angeles Times, December 16, 1941Zimmerman, Paul "Duke Likely to Play Beavers in Durham. Blue Devils Invite Foes Rose Bowl, Shrine Grid Games Halted as Other Sports Events in Balance". Los Angeles Times, December 15, 1941. 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.Zimmerman, Paul "Scene of Rose Bowl Shifted to Durham, N.C." Los Angeles Times, December 16, 1941. Perpetuation of the annual Rose Bowl intersectional football classic was assured yesterday when the Tournament of Roses officials and Oregon State College accepted the hospitality of Duke University. 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.Gene Sherman "Rose Parade Goes to War. Spirit of Bond Drive Insures Return of Great Floral Pageant". Los Angeles Times, January 2, 1943. Quote:Once again yesterday war's ugly shadow stretched long across Colorado St. and there was no Tournament of Roses on New Year's Day in Pasadena.
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.R.I.P. Time Magazine, December 6, 1943 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.Michael Oriard King Football: Sport and Spectacle in the Golden Age of Radio & Newsreels, Movies & Magazines, The Weekly & The Daily Press. Published 2004 UNC Press. Chapter 3: Who cares about reform? 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.football, gridiron. (2008). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved January 28, 2008, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: www.britannica.com/eb/article-234274 . Football in the United States – The racial transformation of American football. Encyclopædia Britannica
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.Big Ten Football media guide (2007 Edition) page 5Samuelsen, Rube. The Rose Bowl Game. United States: Doubleday, 1951. pg 212 UCLA, USC, Minnesota and Illinois all voted against it."Rose Bowl History Big Ten Tamed the West from 1948–59". Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 30, 1997 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 (AAWU), 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 (resolving a 5–5 voting deadlock which had prevented any new negotiations for years), a Big Ten agreement was finalized, which went into effect with the 1963 Rose BowlThe Big Ten Records Book. United States: The Bureau, 1984. pg 290 and lasted until the BCS era.