100 years ago in Pasadena: Washington State tops Brown in Rose Bowl

From our archives, 100 years ago

The Washington State College football team “smeared” Brown University, 14-0, in Pasadena, proving that “West is Best,” according to a front-page headline.

This was apparently the first-ever Rose Bowl to use that exact title, although The Spokesman-Review didn’t call it the Rose Bowl in its story. It just called it a big game in Pasadena.

However, the game clearly had national status. Brown was the team that had earlier humbled the perennial Eastern powerhouse, Yale.

“Having no team down in these parts which looked quite good enough to wallop Brown, Pasadena borrowed a team from Washington State for the occasion, and in so doing made no mistake,” said a sportswriter. “The upcoast boys did a thorough and painstaking job and left absolutely nothing to the imagination.”

He said the enduring image of the game was “of the fine young college men of the best New England families, dripping with rich, sticky loam.”

The score would have been more lopsided except for a late Washington State fumble on the Brown two-yard line.

The game’s referee, a former All-American quarterback, said of Washington State, “There is not a better football team in the country. I do not believe I ever saw a better one at any time.”

The sportswriter noted that many of the Washington State players had received their training in the region’s “mines and lumber camps.”