This Rose Bowl Friday entry moves us forward into the 1950s, sort of, as the culmination of the 1949 regular season was held early in 1950. There was little impact on the mythical national championship of the time, but there could have been some kind of 1947 controversy if the Granddaddy of Them All had experienced a different outcome. Alas, one team fell short again in Pasadena, which we will look at below in more detail.

First thing first, however: the Ohio State Buckeyes tied for the Western Conference championship with the Michigan Wolverines, and oddly, the two teams played to a 7-7 tie in Ann Arbor on the final regular-season weekend for both teams. The Buckeyes won the tiebreaker at the time, however, advancing to the Rose Bowl with a 6-1-2 record, a No. 6 ranking in the AP poll, a No. 5 ranking in the SRS, and the No. 2 overall SOS.

They faced there the California Golden Bears, who had lost the prior year in the Granddaddy and were playing in their second of three straight Rose Bowls. This team was a perfect 10-0 again, ranked No. 3 in the AP poll, ranked No. 2 in the SRS, with the No. 16 SOS. And again, Cal had a much shorter distance to travel to Pasadena than Ohio State did, with the Buckeyes not having played in the Granddaddy since 1921. Yikes!

The game itself? Well … Cal took a 7-0 halftime lead and probably expected the Buckeyes to fold in the second half from fatigue. That did not happen, as Ohio State took a 14-7 lead in the third before the Golden Bears tied it up before the fourth quarter began. Cal running back Jim Monachino scored both touchdowns for his team and was looking to be the MVP, for sure. But it did not turn out so well for the Golden Bears …

Alas, the Buckeyes notched the only score of the final quarter, an 18-yard field goal, to emerge with a 17-14 victory. Cal had been a 6.5-point favorite, and for the second season in a row, the Bears lost their shot at a perfect season with a loss in the Rose Bowl: a total of nine points combined cost Cal a lot of historical street cred with two losses to (future) B1G teams in the Granddaddy. Imagine a world where the Bears had won!

Ha, forget it. This is Cal we’re talking about here, a school that hasn’t won the Rose Bowl (still) since 1938. On a side note, this was the first Rose Bowl to have 100,000 fans attend, as the game was so popular with spectators that another expansion of the seating capacity was undertaken in the year prior. Bigger and better in the Granddaddy of Them All, as always. The rest of the nation would struggle to keep up …