My folks went to the 1961 Rose Bowl where UW beat Minnesota for the natty (quack) They brought back the year book from the game that had a season recap for both teams UW had beat USC under new coach John McKay 34-0. That was a big win. USC would win the natty in the 63 Rose Bowl. In the 63 season UW beat USC 22-7 to win the AAWU title followed by the obligatory loss to UCLA in a Rose Bowl season.
Then a long spell of USC dominating everyone including UW. James came in 1975 and beat John McKay who had announced his retirement to go to the NFL. Broke a ten game losing string. Warren Moon went around the end for a clinching 70 yard TD in 77 to wrap that Rose Bowl bid up. And yes they lost to UCLA.
From then to the mid 90's USC was the game and the standard
I get why younger folks laugh at us olds and our fascination with USC but it was earned. Sure USC sucks now, as does UW again unfortunately, but a certain magic still lingers when you say the name
Oregon is the big game now. No question
Comments
What does the Whammy in Miami have to do with this?
@creepycoug
Washington is now a better program than SC
Not your level of olds but as an old soul and long time proponent of everything about the traditional Rose Bowl game, the matchup with USC always speaks to the journey of getting there.
Disagree
Past decade? Easily
Lol no natty
Look, I too grew up watching the Pac slap around the Big in the Rose Bowl, and I'm generally a "west is best" kind of guy in terms of where I choose to live. That said, we? … the we that matters … are all together in a new conference with more exposure and money and a few teams that are a lot better than the second level Pac teams. We now will trade blows with Buck, Michigan and Penn State, and that is more "prestigious" than Stanford, Cal and Arizona State. We still have a Harvard-level academis prowess school for those who like to jerk off to that sort of thing in the middle of the football store. Recruiting will, over the long haul, improve for everyone.
Sometimes, change is good, and this is a good change. And, we? still have USC. And Washington and Oregon can still hate each other … would have been a shame to see the best west coast rivalry die. USC is still part of the journey. When they get good again, we? can all pull out the appropriate amount of respect.
I strongly supported the move for those exact reasons. Change happened and we got the best outcome other than share of revenue. But if I could snap my fingers and go back to the Pac-10 and Big 10 (with 11 teams), with the winners playing in the Rose Bowl, I would.
The B1G move is not anything I would ever have wanted. Financial necessity, but otherwise UW playing against Rutgers, Maryland, Iowa, Purdue, Indiana, etc is beyond stupid. The conference realignment stuff sucks ass and I will probably slowly quit giving a shit if there aren't some massive overhauls to NIL in the next 2-3 years.
In the good old days it was the LA schools and us.
Then Uncle Fill dumped his sweatshop Chinese shoe money into a school that struggled to get 30,000 people for a football game and was a laughingstock.
Damn UWs the same as Toledo I guess
This.