But it was more than just a parade in 1890 The festivities included games such as tug-of-war jousting and foot races A few years later the Rose Parade grew bigger It added parade floats with motors There were also ostrich races and a race between a camel and an elephant In 1900 the Rose Parade was shown in movie theaters throughout the country Once people from other states saw film of the parade many wanted to travel to California to see it in person By 1902 the Tournament of Roses Association was ready to add the emerging sport of football to the festival to attract even more visitors It wanted to include one team from the West Coast and an opponent from east of the Mississippi River The University of Southern California USC was the closest college football team to Pasadena but USC did not play an impressive schedule It played only one game against a college team in 1901 a 6 0 loss to Pomona College The University of California Berkeley was also close to Pasadena but only two of its nine wins were against college teams The association eventually chose Stanford as the team from West Coast Michigan was its opponent The first Rose Bowl game was held at the Pasadena town square which is now called Tournament Park In 1922 6
Aerial view of the Rose Bowl Stadium in 1931 a new stadium was built for the football games It seated 57,000 fans and cost more than 270,000 to build The players and coaches from Michigan and Stanford traveled to Pasadena by train for the first game in 1902 It took them almost a week on the train to get to Pasadena Michigan had won all 10 of its games before the Rose Bowl and was expected to handle Stanford easily Michigan had not given up a single point and had scored 7
Halfback Marshall Goldberg of Pittsburgh 42 carries the ball during the 1937 Rose Bowl against Washington 8
501 points in 10 games The Wolverines won one of their games 128 0 Stanford won three games that year lost one and tied two The Rose Bowl result reflected Michigan’s dominant season The forward pass was not legal yet in football so both teams could only run the ball Wolverines fullback Neil Snow scored five touchdowns Running back Willie Heston ran for 170 yards in Michigan’s victory With eight minutes left in the game Stanford’s captain said his team was too exhausted to continue Stanford asked for the game to end early so it did Michigan was the winner of the first Rose Bowl game Because the first Rose Bowl was such a blowout there wasn’t another game for 14 years The Rose Festival featured other sports to replace football Competitions included chariot races and polo Football returned to the Rose Bowl in 1916 when Washington State beat Brown 14 0 at Tournament Park Over the years the Rose Bowl has had many big games and memorable plays It has also been a part of media history In 1962 it became the first college bowl game to be televised in color throughout the country It also was the first college bowl game to draw 100,000 fans That happened in 1950 In the latter half of the twentieth century the Big Ten and Pac-10 conferences 9
