The Chariots, Ostriches, and Rugby That Almost Replaced the "Granddaddy of Them All"

Imagine tuning into the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day only to find chariot races, the Wright brothers, and ostriches sprinting down the track instead of a football game. It sounds like a bizarre alternative history, but in the early 1900s, this was almost the permanent reality for the "Granddaddy of Them All."

As the legendary Rose Bowl celebrates its storied history, Darin Hayes of Pigskin Dispatch sat down with football historian Timothy P. Brown of Football Archaeology to uncover the rocky, forgotten origins of college football's most famous postseason game.

The Blowout That Stopped the Game

The very first matchup in 1902 featured Michigan absolutely demolishing Stanford. The blowout was so brutal that Stanford threw in the towel and ended the game early. This left the Tournament of Roses organizers facing a mountain of stadium debt and a deep fear that fans would never return for another football game.

Hoping to rebound in 1903, organizers extended an invitation to the Wisconsin Badgers. The Badgers were ready to roll, but their university faculty set a strict condition: they would only play a prestigious West Coast school like Cal or Stanford. When Cal backed out at the eleventh hour, the entire 1903 game completely collapsed.

Ostriches, Chariots, and… Rugby?

With football in limbo, the tournament committee had to get creative to fill the stadium and pay the bills. For more than a decade, gridiron football was abandoned in Pasadena. Instead, organizers kept audiences entertained with:

• Chariot and ostrich races around the stadium's cinder track.
• Invitations to the Wright Brothers to perform aerial demonstrations.
• A total shift to rugby by Cal and Stanford in 1905 due to safety concerns surrounding football.

Gridiron football didn't successfully return until 1916, when Washington State took on Brown. In fact, the original 1902 blowout was considered such an outlier that newspapers routinely left it off official Rose Bowl records for decades—much to the annoyance of Michigan's legendary coach, Fielding Yost.

What’s in a Name?

Surprisingly, the game wasn't even called the "Rose Bowl" during its early years; it carried the clunky title of the "Tournament of Roses East-West Game." The iconic moniker wasn't born until 1923, when a local Pasadena sports writer used the term "Rose Bowl"—drawing inspiration from the Yale Bowl—right as the brand-new stadium was unveiled.

Want more fascinating deep dives into forgotten gridiron history? Head over to FootballArchaeology.com to subscribe to Tim Brown's daily historical tidbits.

The Rose Bowl is 100 Years Old! In celebration of this milestone, we are covering the history of the stadium and the New Years' Game game associated with it by gathering research from resources from some of the finest historians and authors in the gridiron realm. Timothy Brown of Football Archaeology joins us to chat about the first game played at the Tournament of Roses festival way back in 1902. We start at the first gridiron game for the Tournament of Roses festival.

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