Football this New Year’s Day – it’s the season and in answer to all the requests for historic Sports material, I managed to dig out this one: A Rose Bowl Game between Stanford University and Illinois University – New Years Day 1952.
Apparently it didn’t go down as one of Stanfords Golden moments and, as reported by Sports Journalism Legend Grantland Rice indicated in his post-game assessment, was something of a disaster.
Here’s the Grantland Rice article from January 2, 1952 to give you some idea the atmosphere and the reporting at the time:
Stanford Collapse Worst Ever Seen by Grantland Rice
PASADENA. Calif., Jan.1. More than 104,000 spectators, from which massive number 96,825 paid S5 each, heard Horace Greeley’s famous advice, revised, here today: “Go West, young man, and win football fame. You can’t miss.” With Illinois for the second time carrying the banner of the Big Ten the Midwestern invader won their sixth consecutive Rose Bowl game by the wide margin of 40 to 7, a complete wreckage of fond Pacific Coast dreams. Stanford could gain only through the air with Kerkorian passing to McColl, Hugasian and Mathias.
Stanford was a beaten, battered team run to earth, completely demoralized. I’ve never seen a good team crash so completely. Illinois let the arm go and traded It in for the flying foot. The Illinois moved from the air to the turf and so won an impressive and decisive victory. I doubt that any team today would have beaten this hard-hitting, speedy Illinois squad that Ray Eliot had coached and directed so ably.
Here was a hard-bitten, fast-moving squad that knew its job. I think it was a much better team than Kentucky or many other Bowl winners.
So wrote Grantland Rice in 1952.
And now you get to hear the whole game, as it was broadcast by NBC Radio on New Years Day 1952.
Enjoy and go practice.
We had such a great momentum, thought I would keep this going until the weekend:
