Our feature on the 2007 Rose Bowl has tons of links, articles and pictures about the January 1, 2007 football game between the USC Trojans and the Michigan Wolverines. Check it out!

#15 Runs away with it by Pictopolis

When I was growing up, the Rose Bowl was always the Big Ten winner vs. the Pac 10 winner. Many times, that meant Michigan vs. USC. Wikipedia does a great job of taking you through the history of the bowl game dubbed "The Grandaddy of Them All":

Originally titled the "Tournament East-West football game," the Rose Bowl was first played on January 1, 1902, starting the tradition of New Years Day bowl games. The inaugural game featured Fielding Yost's dominating 1901 Michigan team, representing the East, who crushed a previously 3-1-2 team from Stanford University, representing the West, by a score of 49-0 after Stanford quit in the third quarter. Michigan finished the season 11-0-0 and was considered the national champion ... The game was so lopsided that for the next 15 years, the Tournament of Roses officials ran chariot races, ostrich races, and other various events instead of football. But, in 1916 football returned to stay.

In addition to having all kinds of information about the past and present of the event, the Tournament of Roses official Rose Bowl Game web site has a really cool timeline with photos from as far back as the 1890s. As you can see from the timeline, the Tournament of Roses Rose Parade is as big (or bigger) a deal as the game. This year is the 118th Rose parade (theme is Our Good Nature) which will take place on Monday, January 1, 2007 at 11 AM EST.

The Rose Bowl
part of a great set of Rose Bowl pics

Both the USC Trojan Football program and the University of Michigan football program have their own pages on the 2007 Rose Bowl (visit UM 2007 Rose Bowl & USC's 2007 page) that will allow you to wallow as deeply in all the tradition, stats and (of course) merchandising as you wish. UM's site has Lloyd Carr's thoughts on the facing USC and on how the BCS has changed it.

The Rose Bowl has not been kind to the Wolverines. Michigan hasn't won a Rose Bowl since '98 and has an 8-11 overall record (including dropping 5 of 7 to So Cal). Therefore, it's not surprising that there isn't much recent happiness for Wolverine fans on YouTube vis a vis USC (lot of Leinart beating the Maize & Blue in 2003). You have to go back to the 1989 22-14 victory over the Trojans to see something happy. No Rose Bowl is truly complete, however, without the University of Michigan marching band playing the national anthem.

University of Michigan Wolverines Blogs & Forums

the M Zone
M Go Blog
Blue Cats & Red Sox
Michigan Football Saturdays
UM Official Athletic site
The Fort
Schembechler Hall
Mr Wolverine

USC Blogs

Trojan Football News - solid, non-nonsense SC football.
The Displaced Trojan - another dispassionate and polite blog about USC football
TrojanWire - isn't there any passion, any fire, any of that legendary California craziness left out there?
Boi From Troy - "Politics, The Gays and USC Football" There we go, that's the California Mrs. Johnson warned us about in 4th grade.
Maybe the best thing our research team found was this account of Caltech's legendary 1961 Rose Bowl prank. You might also want to fire up the camera and shoot a fan photo for Universal Studios Michigan fan photo contest.