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The date: January 1, 1926.
The matchup: Alabama (9-0) vs. Washington (10-0-1)
My second book, The 50 Best* College Football Teams of All Time, came out in March. The title is a misdirection — it’s not about the best teams; it’s about college football at its best and most interesting.
Over the coming weeks, we’re going to take a look at some of the biggest games from these 50 best* teams.
Rose Bowl breakthroughs
1924 Notre Dame, 1925 Alabama, 1931 USC, 1993 Wisconsin, 2004 Texas
Offensive innovation
1906 Chicago, 1943 Iowa Pre-Flight, 1968 Texas, 1991 Florida, 2007 Oregon
Dramatic seasons
1960 Iowa, 1965 UCLA, 1978 Missouri, 1982 Pitt, 2013 Auburn
Star power
1923 Illinois, 1938 TCU, 1980 Georgia, 1984 Boston College, 1999 Virginia Tech
On the rise
1951 Michigan State, 1962 Nebraska, 1970 Alabama, 1981 Florida State, 2002 USC
Mid-majors
1930 Utah, 1970 Dartmouth, 1972 Tampa, 1974 Miami (Ohio), 2010 Boise State
Greatness denied
1941 Northwestern, 1968 Purdue, 1973 Michigan, 1988 Miami, 1990 Virginia, 1998 Ohio State
Incredible defense
1938 Tennessee, 1957 Auburn, 1959 Ole Miss, 1985 Oklahoma, 1993 Texas A&M
The stakes: The 1925 national title and the pride of an entire region. No biggie.
The back story: From The 50 Best*:
By 1925, the Rose Bowl had become college football’s showcase game. It was designed to pit an eastern team against a western team, in a gorgeous locale, in a de facto national title game. It conveyed status. It also hadn’t yet invited a team from the South. [...]
Technically, the Rose Bowl’s streak of non-invitation should have continued in 1925. Undefeated Dartmouth was offered a bid, but school officials turned the invitation down in mid-November. The school was not prone to accepting such bids anyway, but in this case snowfall in New Hampshire was so significant that the school feared the team wouldn’t get adequate practice time in to do the game justice.
Depending on who you believe, Colgate either turned down an invitation as well or got eliminated when it finished the season with a tie against a bad Brown team. Tulane, Princeton, Illinois, Michigan, and Yale were all supposedly approached as well.
Eventually, by either choice or the lack of any other options, the Rose Bowl invited a dominant, unbeaten Alabama squad. And for the second straight year, the Rose Bowl and its result changed the trajectory of the sport’s history, despite itself.
The game:
Early in the game, the southern team was on the short end of a 12-to-0 score and appeared doomed to defeat by a considerable margin. Under such conditions, most any eleven would have acknowledged defeat, but not so with the gallant sons of Dixieland, who kept threatening the Husky goal after receiving the kick-off of the game.
That 12-point lead meant nothing to Capt. Jones, Hubert and Mack Brown, not to mention the rest of the stockingless squad which Coach Wallace Wade trotted on the gridiron. They simply bided their time and when the proverbial breaks presented themselves, the Crimson Tide warriors from the South took advantage and converted them into scores.
Translation from 1920ese: Alabama trailed early but erupted in the third quarter, took a 20-12 lead, and held on to win, 20-19.
The box score: From the LA Times.
The Tide’s train had to stop in basically every city in the South on the way home as a celebration of the achievement. This game lit a fire like few have; within a decade, the SEC had formed out of the ridiculous mass that was the Southern Conference. The most serious football schools in the South got together, then got even more serious about the sport. You probably know the rest of the story.