Rose Bowl Friday pushes forward to the 1948 regular season, which featured a mythical national champion who could not play in the Granddaddy of Them All due to silly, no-repeat rules at the time. Nonetheless, the Pasadena tradition rolled on, as there was a Top 10 matchup in the Rose Bowl, including a team that would not return to the Granddaddy for 47 years—that same team would not win another bowl game until 2013!

The No. 4-ranked California Golden Bears came into the game with a perfect 10-0 record, but they literally did not play a ranked team all season—which seems very strange. This resulted in an SOS ranking (33rd) which did not impress the Associated Press poll voters, obviously. Still, when you run the table, you run the table: Cal was No. 5 in the sabermetric SRS with the 12th-ranked offense and the 17th-ranked defense. Solid.

The opponent would be No. 7 Northwestern, with a 7-2 record. Those two losses came against then-No. 4 Michigan on the road and then-No. 2 Notre Dame on the road, as well. The Wildcats were No. 8 in the SRS after having played the No. 8-ranked SOS. Too bad the AP voters couldn’t align well enough there, eh? Either way, Northwestern finished second in the (future) B1G due to its loss against the Wolverines.

But Michigan couldn’t play in the Rose Bowl again after the prior year’s appearance. So, there was a perception that the Golden Bears were facing an inferior team; throw in the fact that the Wildcats were making their first-ever trip to Pasadena, and well … you know how this goes, with travel across the country and all, right? Well, no. Northwesten actually was favored due to its strong showing against Notre Dame.

Losing by just five points to the Fighting Irish on November 13 gave the Wildcats a lot of street cred, and Cal had scrapped by unranked Stanford by just one point on November 20. Yet. the Golden Bears actually held the lead entering the fourth quarter, by a 14-13 margin. This kept until the final minutes of the game when the Wildcats mounted an 88-yard drive for the go-ahead touchdown, and Cal could not respond late itself.

With 93,000 fans in attendance, the Rose Bowl itself would see a seating expansion before the next Granddaddy, expanding the capacity to six figures. We posted the fate of the Northwestern football team above, yet the Golden Bears would return to Pasadena the following two years as the (future) Pac-12 had no rule about repeat/return trips. We will leave Cal’s fate up in the air for readers to discover next week, eh?