The Rose Bowl Game (College Playoff) kicked off a myriad college football legacies in 1902 and is known as the oldest of bowls. Since then, the game has been home to 19 Heisman Trophy winners, produced 29 national champions, featured 208 consensus All-Americans and honored 113 college football legends by inducting them into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame.
The first Tournament of Roses football game, which was the first post-season football game in the nation, was staged at Tournament Park on January 1, 1902. The game matched the West Coast’s Stanford against Midwestern Michigan. (The teams would later become members of today’s Pac-12 and Big Ten conferences, respectively.) Michigan routed Stanford, 49-0, prompting the football contest to be replaced with Roman-style chariot races inspired by the literary classic Ben-Hur. Football was permanently reinstated as part of the Tournament’s traditions in 1916.
The exclusive agreement among the Tournament of Roses Association, the Big Ten Conference and the Pac-12 Conference was born in 1946, and the first game played under the agreement took place on January 1, 1947. The pact is the oldest intercollegiate postseason bowl agreement between two major conferences in the United States.
This collegiate classic has been the occasion of many firsts. The Rose Bowl Game was the occasion of first local radio broadcast of an East-West bowl game in 1926, the first transcontinental radio broadcast of a sporting event in 1927, the first local telecast of a college football game in 1948, the first national telecast of a college football game in 1952 and the first coast-to-coast color telecast of a collegiate football game in 1962.
The 102nd Rose Bowl Game will be held on January 1, 2018 at the Rose Bowl Stadium. The game will feature the champion of the Pac-12 and Big Ten Conference. If the Conference champion is selected to participate in the College Football Playoff Semifinal, the Rose Bowl Game will select the next best team in the conference. The Rose Bowl Game will host a College Football Playoff Semifinal in 2018.