Rose Bowl Football Game

USC is the winningest team in Rose Bowl history. Michigan is the winningest team in college football history. When the traditional powers play today in the 93rd Rose Bowl game, it will mark the eighth Rose Bowl meeting between the schools. USC leads the Rose Bowl series, 5-2. Michigan won two regular-season games against the Trojans, in 1957 and 1958. A look at each Rose Bowl game: JAN.

A photograph of LaMichael James went viral this week, the shot of the Oregon star cowering on a Disneyland thrill ride literally zooming across social media platforms. Reaction to the photo -- and his terror-filled expression -- surprised and amused James. "I guess I'm on a lot of people's minds," he said. It didn't seem that way during the latter half of the college football season. The 2010 Heisman Trophy finalist mostly fell out of discussion for this season's award despite leading the nation in rushing yards per game.

Oregon's last Rose Bowl victory could be called the Great-Granddaddy of Them All. It came in 1917, months before the birth of John F. Kennedy and the United States' entry into World War I. The Rose Bowl game was still in its infancy. Stanford had been so humbled by Michigan in the first game 15 years earlier that it conceded defeat in the third quarter of a 49-0 rout and soon abandoned football for rugby. Tournament of Roses officials almost gave up on the sport as well.

The Space Mountain ride didn't much interest Leigh Tiffin when the Alabama kicker visited Disneyland a few days ago. "I don't do roller coasters," he said Tuesday. Tiffin prefers to avoid topsy-turvy situations on the field as well. He was one of the steadiest kickers in the nation this season, making 29 of 33 field-goal attempts while becoming a finalist for the Lou Groza Award that went to UCLA's Kai Forbath . The Bruins kicker gave his Crimson Tide counterpart the lowdown on kicking at the Rose Bowl last month at an awards banquet, which could prove useful Thursday when Alabama plays Texas in the Bowl Championship Series title game.

The road sign on Route 83 that welcomes you to Colt McCoy's hometown needs updating because it states, "Tuscola, population 714." That head count was taken 10 years ago. "I imagine we're pretty close to 800 now," City Secretary Billie Pearce said from behind the counter at City Hall. It was Dec. 22, and Pearce was about to celebrate her 78th Christmas here. "If you saw where the funeral home is?" she said, pointing outside to Bartlett's parlor. "Right across the street is where I was born."

Michigan won the first Rose Bowl football game, in 1902, before a crowd of 8,000, when the opposing team's captain begged for mercy with eight minutes remaining and the score Michigan 49, Stanford 0. The result was so unpopular, the Tournament of Roses committee replaced football for several years with polo, chariot races and a race between a camel and an elephant.

I was checking out Tuesday's itinerary for the football teams and fans from Wisconsin and Stanford who have come here for our 2000 Tournament of Roses parade (which should give off a delightful odor) and for our Rose Bowl football game (which I hope doesn't end up smelling like an expired Wisconsin dairy product). Century City, 8:30 a.m.--Team coaches meet the press. USC, 10:30 a.m.--Stanford practice.

One evening in 1985, a big, bull-shouldered man walked into Hana Sushi, a Japanese restaurant in Brentwood, and was approached by the owner. "Hi, I'm Bob Stiles," the owner said, shaking the big man's hand. "Hi, I'm Bob Apisa," the big man said. Both men burst out laughing. They had met 19 years earlier--on the Rose Bowl's one-yard line. "I nearly keeled over in a faint," Stiles said recently. "It was the first time we'd actually met since that game."

Nearly four years later, it is still an ugly memory. A Rose Bowl football game being played, but not on the usual Jan. 1 date. No team from the Pacific 10 or Big Ten conferences in sight after pass-happy, flamboyant Oregon was knocked out of its rightful place in Pasadena by a complex mathematical formula that sent forward Nebraska, even though the Cornhuskers had been badly beaten in their final regular-season game. The game, played on Jan.

Even the youngest among them are old men now, bent by the weight of their years . . . yet still inspired by memories of their stone-faced leader, Howard Jones. As USC prepares for its 28th Rose Bowl appearance this week, the oldest Trojans remember the man who established USC as a Rose Bowl team. Once they numbered in the hundreds. Now, fewer than 20 of Howard Jones' players remain, all in their 70s and 80s. Decades ago, they went to one another's weddings. Now . . .

Bobby Bowden never led any of his Florida State teams to the Rose Bowl. But the recently retired Bowden, whose coaching career spanned nearly six decades, will have an emotional stake in Thursday night's Bowl Championship Series title game between No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 Texas in Pasadena. Texas Coach Mack Brown is a friend and Florida State alum . . . but that's not it. No, Bowden said, "I would have to go with 'Bama." There's no choice, really. Bowden's love affair with Alabama football dates to his youth.

A lot can happen in one second. No one on the Texas football team knows that better than safety Blake Gideon . A year ago, one second was all that was left when Texas Tech receiver Michael Crabtree tip-toed into the end zone for the game-winning touchdown that cost Texas a chance to get to the national title game. Last month, one second was left when Hunter Lawrence kicked a 46-yard field goal to win the Big 12 Conference championship game and send Texas to Thursday's national title game against Alabama.

The road sign on Route 83 that welcomes you to Colt McCoy's hometown needs updating because it states, "Tuscola, population 714." That head count was taken 10 years ago. "I imagine we're pretty close to 800 now," City Secretary Billie Pearce said from behind the counter at City Hall. It was Dec. 22, and Pearce was about to celebrate her 78th Christmas here. "If you saw where the funeral home is?" she said, pointing outside to Bartlett's parlor. "Right across the street is where I was born."

Tony Seminary never expected to experience Pasadena in January after enduring Boise in September. Yet there the Oregon football fan was Friday afternoon at the Rose Bowl, a T-shirt with quarterback Jeremiah Masoli's No. 8 on his back and a plastic duck call draped from his neck. "To be here today from that," Seminary said, referring to the Ducks' 19-8 loss to Boise State in their season opener, "I would have never guessed." Seminary was so disgusted with the Ducks' listless play against the Broncos -- not to mention the infamous postgame punch by running back LeGarrette Blount -- that he e-mailed Oregon Coach Chip Kelly and jokingly attached an invoice for his travel expenses.

Ohio State put the clamps on Oregon's run-and-fun offense throughout Friday's Rose Bowl, but there was one player the Buckeyes never got a handle on -- Kenjon Barner , a redshirt freshman from Riverside Notre Dame High. Barner ran for 64 yards in seven carries, caught a 13-yard pass, returned a punt for 28 yards and took back four kickoffs for 122 yards, including a long of 39 yards. Barner was a star running back in high school, but Oregon recruited him as a defensive back.

Frankly Scarlet (and gray), that was beautiful. The play of your young, Vince-like quarterback, the schemes you drew up, the time-consuming marches down the field, the marching band -- you pitched the perfect game plan. The two-tone hues on the mountains, as the sun set over the Arroyo Seco, even resembled Ohio State's uniforms. Woody, were you up there? Friday's 26-17 victory over Oregon in the 96th Rose Bowl was everything Columbus could have conjured. It was vindication after three straight major bowl losses.

On New Year's Day 1990, the young men of the USC football team won the biggest game of their lives. Led by first-year quarterback Todd Marinovich, the Trojans fought their way past the University of Michigan Wolverines in the Rose Bowl. The score had been tied until the final two minutes, when Ricky Ervins, the diminutive tailback from Pasadena, ran in the final touchdown for a 17-10 victory and was named the Rose Bowl's most valuable player in his hometown.

ABC, which began televising the Rose Bowl game and the Rose Parade in 1989, will continue doing so through 2014. ABC and the Rose Bowl management committee have reached an agreement on an eight-year extension of their current contract, which was to expire after the 2006 BCS championship game. Under the extension, which goes into effect with the 2007 game, ABC will pay an average of about $30 million per game for rights, according to sources.

Oregon is in the Rose Bowl for the first time since 1995. Ohio State returns to the Arroyo Seco for the first time since 1997. Times staff writer Gary Klein looks at some of the game's key issues and matchups when the Pacific 10 Conference champion Ducks play the Big Ten Conference champion Buckeyes. Movers and shakers Oregon quarterback Jeremiah Masoli mans the controls of a spread-option offense that operates at a quick pace before and after the snap. Masoli has completed 59% of his passes for 15 touchdowns, with five interceptions.

Casey Matthews will have no trouble finding his way to the Rose Bowl this morning. "It seems like everyone in my family has played in it but me," said the junior linebacker for Oregon. It seems like everyone in his family has won there, too. His father Clay, uncle Bruce and brother Clay III all did that for USC. So Casey had some questions to answer when he showed up at Oregon. "People looked at me and just said, 'Oh, you're branching off.' But I just wanted to set my own legacy," he said.