The History of the Rose Bowl

By 4Football Staff · October 15, 2026 · 9 min read

From a one-sided game in 1902 to a stadium in Pasadena that gave every bowl its name, this is how the Rose Bowl became the Granddaddy of Them All and how it fits the playoff era.

Every bowl game in the country owes its name to a stadium in Pasadena, California. The word "bowl" was not a football term until the early 1920s, when a horseshoe-shaped stadium opened at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains and the Tournament of Roses named it for the flowers that decorated its famous parade. Within a few years, any stadium shaped like a bowl and hosting a postseason game was borrowing the label.

The Rose Bowl is also the oldest of the bowl games, and its history reads like a short course in how college football grew: from a one-sided exhibition that ended with a team quitting, to a pause of more than a decade, to a regional showpiece, a wartime relocation, a long partnership between two conferences and, finally, a place in the playoff era.

This article follows that history. It sticks to the well-documented events, explains how the game fit into each period of college football, and is clear about what is known to have changed. For the wider story of how other bowls followed, see The Rise of the Bowl System.

A parade in search of an attraction

The story begins with a parade. In 1890, a social club in Pasadena organized a procession of flower-decorated carriages on New Year's Day, partly to show off the mild California winter to people who lived in the snowy East and Midwest. The event grew quickly, and the organizers formed a group that became the Tournament of Roses Association. The association still runs the parade and the game today, and many of its members are volunteers known for their white suits.

As the parade grew, the organizers wanted something to fill the afternoon. Early afternoon programs included athletic contests such as foot races and other events, which suited a festival, but the organizers were looking for an attraction that would draw a crowd and cement the idea that Pasadena was the place to be on January 1. Football, which was exploding in popularity across the country, seemed like a natural choice.

1902: Michigan and Stanford

The first football game held as part of the Tournament of Roses took place on New Year's Day in 1902, at a field in Pasadena called Tournament Park. The organizers invited the University of Michigan, whose team of that era was nicknamed the "Point-a-Minute" squad because of how often it scored, and matched it against Stanford University from the West Coast.

The game was a mismatch. Michigan won 49 to 0, and Stanford conceded the game with a few minutes remaining, asking to stop rather than play out the clock. The 49-point margin is among the largest in the game's history, and football then disappeared from the festival for years. Accounts of why differ: some point to the lopsided result, others to the cost and difficulty of staging a major game, and the organizers had other attractions to try.

The chariot years

For the next several years, the Tournament replaced football with other attractions. Chariot races, in the style of ancient Rome, became the main afternoon event, along with other contests. These were popular with some spectators, but the sport the organizers kept coming back to was football, and it was still growing at colleges across the country.

The game returned in 1916, when Washington State University faced Brown University, and Washington State won. Since then the game has been played every year, though twice in a different city, as we explain below. The 1916 revival set the pattern of an annual contest that matched a team from the West against a team from elsewhere.

The stadium that named the bowls

The teams played in Tournament Park for the first years of the revived series, but the crowds were growing, and the organizers wanted a permanent stadium. The result was a large stadium in the Arroyo Seco, designed by the architect Myron Hunt, who took inspiration from the Yale Bowl in Connecticut, an earlier and influential stadium shaped like a large bowl. The stadium opened in 1922, and the first game played there was on January 1, 1923, in which the University of Southern California defeated Penn State.

It was at this point that the game became known as the Rose Bowl, taking its name from the stadium. Within a decade, a series of imitators had appeared, in Miami, New Orleans, Dallas and elsewhere, and they were called bowls too, whether or not their stadiums were shaped like one. That is how a single stadium's nickname became a generic word for a postseason game.

The stadium sits in a natural depression, which gives it its shape. It has been renovated several times and holds roughly ninety thousand people, although the figure changes with renovations and seating arrangements. It is also the home field of a major university's football team and has hosted other major events, including the final of a men's World Cup in 1994 and a women's World Cup final in 1999. For a look at other stadiums, see our stadium directory.

The 1920s and 1930s: stars and strange moments

The early years in the new stadium produced two of the most remembered moments in the game's history.

In the game played on January 1, 1925, the University of Notre Dame, led by a backfield nicknamed the Four Horsemen, defeated Stanford 27 to 10. It was a landmark for Notre Dame, which went on to avoid bowl games for decades afterward, and it helped establish the Rose Bowl as the sport's premier postseason stage.

In the game played on January 1, 1929, California's center, Roy Riegels, picked up a fumble and ran dozens of yards in the wrong direction toward his own end zone, before a teammate caught up and stopped him. His team ended up losing the game by a single point, 8 to 7, to Georgia Tech. The play is still known as the wrong-way run, and it has become one of the most famous plays in football history, which is remarkable considering that it was a mistake. The story reminds us that the game's early years were about teams from different regions meeting for the first time and the sport's national audience beginning to form.

The Pacific Coast hosts and the eastern guests

For decades, the structure of the game was simple. The champion of the Pacific Coast Conference served as the host, and the Tournament of Roses invited a team from the East or the Midwest to be the guest. Many conferences elsewhere in the country limited or forbade postseason play. In particular, the Big Ten did not allow its members to take part in bowl games for much of this period, a policy intended to keep football from taking too much time away from academics.

The invitation system meant that the guest team varied: schools from the South, the East, the Midwest and the Southwest all had their turn. It also meant that the game helped build the idea that a postseason invitation was a prize.

1942: the game leaves Pasadena

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the military feared further attacks on the West Coast, and officials asked that large gatherings be avoided. The Rose Bowl game scheduled for January 1942 was moved across the country to Durham, North Carolina, where it was played at the home stadium of Duke University, one of the participants. Oregon State defeated Duke 20 to 16. It was the first time the game left Pasadena, and a later move, for a very different reason, is described below.

The 1946 agreement

The change that defined the Rose Bowl for more than half a century came after World War II. In 1946, the Big Ten Conference and the Pacific Coast Conference agreed to a partnership in which each conference's champion would play in the game, with the West Coast champion as host and the Big Ten champion as visitor. The first game under the new arrangement was played on January 1, 1947, and Illinois defeated UCLA.

The agreement turned the Rose Bowl into a clash of regional styles, with the Midwest's power football meeting the West's more open game. It also gave the game a reliable pair of participants and a loyal television audience, and the partnership continued as the Pacific Coast Conference evolved into later conferences. The tie-in lasted for decades, and for much of that time the Rose Bowl was the only bowl game that was a guaranteed meeting of two champions.

Over time, though, the arrangement changed. Conferences were renamed, split, merged and reshuffled, and the relationship between them shifted. If you want to know which conferences are linked to the game in a given year, check the current announcements rather than relying on the older history, because the tie-ins have been revised more than once. The pattern is part of the larger story we tell in Conference Realignment: Why Schools Switch Leagues.

The Granddaddy and the New Year's Day tradition

The game's nickname, the Granddaddy of Them All, reflects its age. For generations, it was played on New Year's Day in the afternoon, and for much of the twentieth century it was a television event that families watched together. The date is part of the brand.

One unusual tradition is that the Tournament of Roses does not hold its events on a Sunday. When January 1 falls on a Sunday, the parade and the game are moved to Monday, January 2. This is a long-standing practice of the Tournament, and it is why the schedule shifts in some years.

Bowl Championship Series and the playoff era

In the late 1990s, college football created a system to match the two top teams in a national championship game, and the Rose Bowl agreed to join, with the Big Ten and Pac-10 champions still playing there in most years. The game also hosted the national championship game several times when it was the Rose Bowl's turn in the rotation. Our article on the history of the college football championship explains how the system worked.

When the four-team College Football Playoff began, the Rose Bowl became one of the bowls that host semifinals on a rotating basis, and it has remained part of the playoff's rotation of host bowls as the format has expanded. In years when the game is a playoff game, the matchup is determined by the selection committee rather than by conference tie-ins; in other years, the tie-ins described above still apply. Because format details change, our playoff format explainer is the best place to confirm how a particular season works.

One more exception is worth noting. In 2021, because of public health restrictions in California during the pandemic, the game was moved to a stadium in Texas for a single year. It was the second time the game had left Pasadena.

Beyond football

The Rose Bowl stadium is also known for other events, and its role in community life is part of why the Rose Bowl has endured. The stadium hosts a college football team's home games and concerts and large community gatherings, and it has a long history as a soccer venue. It is a reminder that the game is part of a larger civic festival, and that a bowl is first of all a place.

A timeline

Common misconceptions

"The Rose Bowl was always held in the Rose Bowl stadium." It began at a smaller field, Tournament Park, and moved to the stadium in 1923. Only the stadium gave the game its name.

"The game has been played every year since 1902." There was a gap of more than a decade after the first game.

"The Big Ten and Pac-12 always play there." That was the pattern for decades, but tie-ins have changed with realignment and the playoff.

"It is the only bowl game." It was for a while, but dozens of others followed, as described in Bowl Games Explained.

The short version

• The Tournament of Roses began in 1890 as a flower parade, and football was added in 1902 as an attraction.
• The first game, Michigan against Stanford, was lopsided and was followed by more than a decade without football.
• The game resumed in 1916 and moved into the new stadium in 1923, which gave all bowl games their name.
• Famous moments include Notre Dame's 1925 win and the wrong-way run of 1929.
• The game was moved to North Carolina in 1942 and to Texas in 2021, and it does not hold events on a Sunday.
• A 1946 agreement between the Big Ten and the Pacific Coast Conference defined the game for decades.
• Today the Rose Bowl is part of the playoff rotation, so check current schedules and tie-ins on our college page and schedule page.