The 1934 Rose Bowl, played on January 1, 1934, was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

bowl game In North America, a bowl game is one of a number of post-season college football games that are primarily played by teams belonging to the NCAA's Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). For most of its history, the Division I Bowl Subdivis ...

. It was the 20th

Rose Bowl Game The Rose Bowl Game is an annual American college football bowl game, usually played on January 1 (New Year's Day) at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. When New Year's Day falls on a Sunday, the game is played on Monday, January 2. The Ro ...

. The

Columbia Lions The Columbia University Lions are the collective athletic teams and their members from Columbia University, an Ivy League institution in New York City, United States. The current director of athletics is Peter Pilling. Ivy League athletics T ...

defeated the

Stanford Indians The Stanford Cardinal are the athletic teams that represent Stanford University. As of June, 2022, Stanford's program has won 131 NCAA team championships. Stanford has won at least one NCAA team championship each academic year for 46 consecutiv ...

(now

Cardinal Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to: Animals * Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds **'' Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae **'' Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, t ...

) 7-0.

Cliff Montgomery Cliff Montgomery (September 17, 1910 – April 21, 2005) was an American football player who served as the captain of the Columbia Lions football team that won the 1934 Rose Bowl Game. Montgomery, the quarterback, called a hidden-ball trick play kn ...

, the Columbia quarterback, was named the Rose Bowl Player Of The Game when the award was created in 1953 and selections were made retroactively.2008 Rose Bowl Program
, 2008 Rose Bowl. Accessed January 26, 2008. At 35,000, it has the lowest attendance in the Rose Bowl game since the

Rose Bowl Stadium The Rose Bowl is an outdoor athletic stadium located in Pasadena, California. Opened in October 1922, the stadium is recognized as a National Historic Landmark and a California Historic Civil Engineering landmark. At a modern capacity of an all ...

was built in 1922. This was one of the few rainy New Year's Day celebrations in Pasadena, California.Palladino, Lisa
OBITUARIES: Cliff Montgomery ’34, Rose Bowl Quarterback
. Columbia College Today, July 2005 Rain three days before had turned the Rose Bowl stadium into a small lake.

Teams

For New Year's Day, 1934, the Lions traveled to Pasadena, California to play the heavily favored

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. S ...

Indians. Stanford had only been scored on four times the entire season, but the Light Blue had performed well, going 7–1 for the season.

Columbia University Lions

Columbia had lost only one game, to Princeton.

Stanford University Indians

In the previous 1932 season, the "Thundering Herd" of the USC Trojans, led by Howard Jones, defeated Stanford 13–0 on the way to a second consecutive national championship and victory in the 1933 Rose Bowl. Stanford player

Frank Alustiza Frank or Franks may refer to: People * Frank (given name) * Frank (surname) * Franks (surname) * Franks, a medieval Germanic people * Frank, a term in the Muslim world for all western Europeans, particularly during the Crusades - see Farang Cur ...

proclaimed “They Will never do that to our team. We will never lose to the Trojans.” A few minutes later, another member of the team proclaimed, “Let’s make that a vow.” The press reported on the vow, but it was forgotten until the next fall when facing USC, they were suddenly called upon to make good upon it.Tradition: Great Moments in the First Fifty Years of Cardinal Football
. The Stanford Review, December 1, 2006, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8 On November 11, in Los Angeles, USC (6–0–1) hosted Stanford (5–1–1). The Trojans suffered their first defeat in 27 games, losing 13–7, in a game that ultimately decided the

Pacific Coast Conference The Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) was a college athletic conference in the United States which existed from 1915 to 1959. Though the Pac-12 Conference claims the PCC's history as part of its own, with eight of the ten PCC members (including ...

championship. Thus, the Stanford class of 1936 became the "Vow Boys".

Game summary

For the three days before the game, torrential rains soaked the field. “When we arrived the day before the game fter traveling from New York by train the Rose Bowl looked like a lake,” Montgomery, the team captain, recalled in a 1981 article in The New York Times. The Pasadena fire department pumped out the stadium. Game day itself, though, was also uncharacteristically rainy for Southern California, and the muddy field rendered the game scoreless going into the second quarter. At that time, and with the ball on the Stanford 17-yard line, Columbia quarterback

'34 executed a trick play called KF-79. During the play, he spun and slipped the ball to Al Barabas '36, then faked a hand-off to Ed Brominski '35, who ran in the opposite direction. While the Indians went for Montgomery and Brominski, Barabas successfully ran around the defense to score for the Lions. Stanford "Vow Boys"

Bobby Grayson Bobby Grayson (December 8, 1914 – September 22, 1981) was an American football player. He was a two-time consensus All-American player who led the Stanford University football team to three consecutive Rose Bowl Games from 1933 to 1935. At St ...

(152 yards on 28 carries), end Monk Moscript, lineman Bob Reynolds and other stars could not overcome the margin as mishaps ruined Stanford's chances. Columbia ended up winning the game, 7–0, capping one of the biggest upsets in Rose Bowl history. The win also cemented Lou Little's reputation at Columbia as the Lions' greatest coach thus far.

Aftermath

Winning the 1934 Rose Bowl has, to date, been ''the'' greatest accomplishment in Columbia football history. The Columbia Lions would have a notable losing streak from 1983 through 1988. Columbia lost 44 games in a row during these years, the second-longest in major college football history. Cliff Montgomery died on April 21, 2005. The "Vow Boys", the Stanford class of 1936, never did lose to USC, defeating them again 16–0 in 1934, and 3–0 in 1935. The 1933 Michigan Wolverines team, who tied for first in the Big Ten conference with Minnesota on a 0–0 tie between the two teams, was voted the 1933 national champion. USC, who had won the previous two years, and who finished the season 10–1–1 was denied a third consecutive national championship.

Teams

Columbia University Lions

Stanford University Indians

Game summary

Aftermath

References

Further reading