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 and also known as gridiron football, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular American football field, field with goalposts at e ...

bowl game. It was the 20th

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

. The Columbia Lions defeated the Stanford Indians (now

Cardinal Cardinal or The Cardinal most commonly refers to * Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds **''Cardinalis'', genus of three species in the family Cardinalidae ***Northern cardinal, ''Cardinalis cardinalis'', the common cardinal of ...

) 7-0. Cliff Montgomery, 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 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 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 entered the bowl with a 7–1 record, having lost only one game, to Princeton, who finished their season undefeated.

Stanford University Indians

In the previous season, the "Thundering Herd" of the 1932 USC Trojans, coached by Howard Jones, defeated Stanford 13–0 on the way to a second consecutive national championship and victory in the 1933 Rose Bowl. Freshman players at Stanford (members of the class of 1936) vowed never to lose to the Trojans, and became known as the " Vow Boys". During the 1934 season, USC (6–0–1) hosted Stanford (5–1–1) on November 11 in Los Angeles. The Trojans suffered their first defeat in 27 games, losing 7–13, as the Stanford players kept their vow in a game that ultimately decided the

Pacific Coast Conference The Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) was a collegiate 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 (includin ...

championship.

Game conditions and summary

For the three days before the game, torrential rains soaked the field, with 5.8 inches soaking Pasadena by New Year's Eve (compared to 2.14 inches for the entire season the year before). “When we arrived the day before the game after traveling from New York by a train, the Rose Bowl looked like a lake,” Montgomery, the team captain, recalled in a 1981 article in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

''. The Pasadena fire department pumped out the stadium. Game day itself was also uncharacteristically rainy for Southern California, and the muddy field rendered the contest scoreless going into the second quarter. With the ball on the Stanford 17-yard line, Columbia quarterback Cliff Montgomery executed a trick play ("KF-79") where he spun and slipped the ball to Al Barabas, then faked a hand-off to Ed Brominski, 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. Despite Stanford's Bobby Grayson rushing for 152 yards on 28 carries, and solid performances by end Jim "Monk" Moscrip, lineman Bob Reynolds and others, Barabas' score stood as the only one of the game, handing Columbia one of the biggest upsets in Rose Bowl history. The win also cemented Lou Little's reputation as the Lions' greatest coach to that time.

Aftermath

Winning the 1934 Rose Bowl has, to date, been ''the'' greatest accomplishment in Columbia football history. The Columbia Lions had a notable losing streak from 1983 through 1988, losing 44 games in a row during these years, the second-longest losing streak 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 football team, who tied for first in the

Big Ten Conference The Big Ten Conference (stylized B1G, formerly the Western Conference and the Big Nine Conference, among others) is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Fa ...

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 conditions and summary

Aftermath

References

Further reading