The 1978 Garden State Bowl, part of the 1978 bowl game season, took place on December 16, 1978, at

Giants Stadium Giants Stadium (sometimes referred to as Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands or The Swamp) was a stadium located in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in the Meadowlands Sports Complex. The venue was open from 1976 to 2010, and it primarily hosted sp ...

in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The competing teams were the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, which competed as a football independent, and the Arizona State Sun Devils, representing the

Pacific-10 Conference The Pac-12 Conference is a collegiate athletic conference, that operates in the Western United States, participating in 24 sports at the NCAA Division I level. Its football teams compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS; formerly Division ...

(Pac-10). In the inaugural edition of the Garden State Bowl, Arizona State came-from-behind to defeat Rutgers 34–18.

Background

This was the seventh bowl game of the decade for Arizona State, who had finished 3rd in the

. Rutgers began their season with a loss to #3 Penn State 20-17. They did not lost another game for two months, winning nine straight games against teams in the area (such as Bucknell, Connecticut, and Columbia). They lost their final game to Colgate at home, but the Scarlet Knights were still invited to their first ever bowl game, played in New Jersey, the same state the team played in.

Game summary

*Rutgers - Dorn 47 yard touchdown run (Startzell kick) *Rutgers - Startzell 46 yard field goal *Arizona State - Weathers 14 yard touchdown pass from Malone (Hicks kick) *Arizona State - Mistler 26 yard touchdown pass from Malone (Hicks kick) *Arizona State - DeFrance 53 yard touchdown pass from Malone (Hicks kick) *Arizona State - Malone 1 yard touchdown run (Hicks kick) *Rutgers - Blackwell 5 yard touchdown run (Blackwell pass to McMichael) *Arizona State - Malone 4 yard touchdown run (kick failed) John Mistler caught 7 passes for 148 yards in an MVP effort as the Sun Devils pulled away in the second half.

Aftermath

Rutgers was not invited to another bowl game until

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...

, which coincidentally was against the Sun Devils. Arizona State did not reach a bowl game again until

1983 The year 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call. Events January * January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to Internet protocol suite, TCP/IP is officially completed (this is consid ...

References

Garden State Bowl Garden State Bowl Arizona State Sun Devils football bowl games Rutgers Scarlet Knights football bowl games Garden State Bowl December 1978 sports events in the United States {{Collegefootball-bowl-stub