Alabama's Ready for Rose Bowl Memories with Color Pictures

Not many teams outside the Pac-10 and Big Ten consider the Rose Bowl as hallowed ground.

But the Alabama Crimson Tide do. Fans, players, and coaches alike see this as something special.

The Rose Bowl Stadium spawned the legends that made the Crimson Tide one of the premier programs in all of football. They were the redneck upstarts that were brought in to show the world that southern teams did not deserve to play with the "elite" teams of the time.

Then, after consistently beating them, they were banned forever.  But forever didn't prove to be all that long thanks to the rotating bowls used for the BCS.

Now Alabama has a chance to make some new memories that can finally be recorded in color film and to reclaim the Rose Bowl once again as its "Home stadium West."

To recap the history of the Rose Bowl and Alabama's history in it, you must start at the beginning.

The first game was in 1902 and few know it was originally called the “Tournament East-West Football Game." It was to match a top team from the east with a western power.

That first game was so bad that it almost killed the whole idea of ever hosting another football game.

Michigan came to play Stanford and was beating them so severely that Stanford quit in the third quarter after being pummeled 49-0. For the next 15 years, that famous New Year’s Day celebration featured ostrich races, chariot races, and anything other than football.

But on Jan. 1, 1916 not only did football come back to stay, but western pride was healed when the State College of Washington beat Brown 14-0.

For nine years this was an east-west contest. A committee was formed to invite on the best of the best.

Southern football was looked upon by the rest of the nation as “Hillbilly Ball” and far inferior to the great teams of the north and the powerhouses of the west. And as a result the south was always snubbed from the Rose Bowl, kept away from the “Biggest and Best."

But southern sports writers kept up the heat, telling how southern teams could take on the best the rest of the nation had to offer. Shameless writers did everything but call the Rose Bowl committee cowards for their reluctance to schedule a southern power.

Following the 1925 Rose Bowl, the committee sought out a southern team that was good enough to match up with a "real" national power and set their sights on Alabama.

The 1925 Alabama team was led by coach Wallace Wade and was undefeated, yet outside the south, few thought these country boys had a chance against a "real" team like Washington.

The first half certainly cemented that belief as Washington jumped out to 12-0 lead and seemed to have the game under control, but a rousing halftime talk by Wade changed the mood and momentum of the game and the Tide came out and scored 20 unanswered points until Washington came back with six of their own.

That 20-19 Alabama win did little to change the skeptics' minds and many felt it was just a lucky win, but in the south, it was the game that changed football forever. For the first time, not only was a southern school invited, but they also won, and they won the national championship as well.

Alabama was invited back the following year to teach them a lesson and silence the critics from the south who claimed absolute vindication with the Alabama win the year before.

1926 saw a Stanford team that was hailed as possibly the best football team ever assembled and no one gave a chance to the boys from 'Bama.

In fact, though the game ended in a 7-7 tie game, Stanford dominated the entire game with 305 yards of offense to Alabama’s 98. But late in the game, after trailing the entire contest, Alabama’s Clarke Pearce blocked a punt that set up Jimmy Johnson’s burst up the middle.

Then, Alabama did a quick line-up and snapped the ball for the extra point before the Cardinals could line up to attempt a block.

North, east, and western sportswriters said Alabama hadn't proved anything except that they could tie by trickery only. However, the Tide ended the season as national champions for the second straight season.

It took five years for Alabama to return after several just so-so seasons, but this team was once again 9-0 and touted as the best in the nation and the 1931 Rose Bowl committee still wanted to prove that western teams were far superior and invited the Tide to return and face a 9-0 Washington State team.

The Rose Bowl had just been enlarged to become one of the largest stadiums in the country, seating 81,000 people, and tickets sold out fast.

By now, coach Wallace Wade was an old hand to settling down the boys, many of who had never traveled more than a few hundred miles from their home. That day, Jimmy “Hurry” Cain engineered one good drive after another and the Tide buried not only Washington State, but also the belief that southern football was inferior.

Alabama was crowned national champion for that season’s work and Wallace Wade handed the reigns over to coach Frank Thomas.

Thomas fielded a 9-1 team, an 8-2 team, and a 7-1-1 team before going undefeated in the regular season and seemed to be a front runner for yet another national championship, so the 1935 Rose Bowl committee wasted no time in signing up Alabama yet again.

This time their opponent would be Stanford yet again and they came in heralded as the “Vow Boys." They were called this because, following a crushing loss to USC in 1933, this team took a vow never to lose to USC again and they didn’t.

In fact, they went to three straight Rose Bowls.

It was said they also took a vow never to lose to a southern school again, but that vow didn’t work out so well as Alabama wowed the crowd with “Dixie’s Air Circus."

Dixie Howell dazzled the attendees in what was the first great passing performance ever seen in the Rose Bowl. Alabama won 29-13 and another national championship that season.

The Great Depression was not just an economic hardship that gripped America in the 1930s, but also a statewide depression as Alabama finally lost a Rose Bowl in 1938.

That 1937 team finished the regular season undefeated and went to face a California team that was also undefeated with one tie. Alabama moved the ball well throughout the game, but four costly fumbles saw them lose 13-0.

California’s Vic Botari barreled his way through the Crimson Tide lines for two touchdowns and 137 yards of sure-handed running.

After not going to the Rose Bowl in 1942 in favor of the Cotton Bowl, where Alabama won yet another national championship, the 1945 squad accepted, what was up to now, its final Rose Bowl Invitation to play USC, which had won nine of its Rose Bowl appearances in a row.

Even though USC had lost two games before this year’s Rose Bowl, many still thought they were the true Rose Bowl champions and the Alabama game would make it an even 10 wins in a row.

Alabama quarterback Harry Gilmer scoffed at such talk and ran for 113 yards right up the middle of the vaunted USC defense to prove it.

Alabama simply steamrolled USC in one of the worst losses ever suffered 34-14. Those 34 points Alabama scored were more than USC’s previous eight Rose Bowl opponents combined.

The loss was so humiliating for the westerners, no southern team was invited back until 2002 when the Rose Bowl was integrated into the BCS structure.

And here is Alabama once again, but this time to face another southern power, the University of Texas. This time future generations can look back at color film and pictures of Crimson jerseys in that fabled stadium.

Will Alabama's Rose Bowl history go on to include yet another win and another national championship? Alabama's fight song even believes it will happen. The final few lines of that song are:

Fight on, fight on, fight on, men!
Remember the Rose Bowl we'll win then!
Go, roll to victory,
Hit your stride,
You're Dixie's football pride, Crimson Tide!

With a great fight song like that, the history the Tide has on that ground, and the team they're bringing, can there be any doubt?