Caltech Connections in Rose Bowl History
August 11, 2022
The first eight Rose Bowl games, then called Tournament East-West football games, were held on what is now Caltech's campus.
The First Game
Credit: Photograph by Walter Schneider held in the Earl Henry Rathburn collection, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan (BL001129, UM Football Team Riding on Carriage in 1902 Rose Parade. quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhl/x-bl001129/bl001129)
The University of Michigan football team, at ease in their Rose Parade carriage here, relentlessly pummeled Stanford later on New Year's Day 1902. Thousands more people than organizers expected came to Tournament Park for that first Tournament East-West football game; most fans had to stand on the sidelines to watch. The game, which ended with a final score of 49-0, precipitated a 16-year pause in the games.
Early Rose Bowl Games and Caltech Football History
Credit: In this cropped 1910 photograph taken from the roof of Throop Hall, the first building on Caltech's current campus, a streetcar travels along California Boulevard north of the historic stadium. Caltech Archives collection
Up until 1923, the annual New Year's Day games, sponsored by the Tournament of Roses, kicked off on what are now the Caltech athletic fields. Caltech (then Throop University) had launched a football program in 1893, two years after its founding. The university co-founded the NCAA Division III Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference in 1915, played against USC and UCLA multiple times, and celebrated an undefeated season in 1944, when Navy recruits trained at Caltech.
Caltech on the Rose Bowl Field
Caltech football teams played and practiced often at the Rose Bowl stadium after its 1923 opening, even after Caltech football became a non-conference club sport in 1968. Caltech alumni cherish memories of playing on the Rose Bowl turf. Though the football program ended in 1993, a quarter of Caltech undergraduates compete in other NCAA III sports.
Caltech Pranks at the Rose Bowl
Credit: Washington students inadvertently cheer for Caltech in this 1961 Rose Bowl photo by Bruce Whitehead. Caltech Archives collection
In the first Caltech Rose Bowl prank, in 1961, students annotated and replaced the instruction sheets for cards that 2,232 University of Washington students and fans flipped overhead to form words and pictures. One card flip showed a beaver instead of a husky and another read "CALTECH." Later, students rigged the scoreboard for the 1984 Rose Bowl Game to show Caltech and MIT instead of UCLA and Illinois.