Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/617289
would intimidate other festival specta- tors and drive tourists away from the pa- rade, foot races, tugs of war, and special events such as medieval style horseman jousts, the sponsors replaced the foot- ball game with chariot races. Frankly, chariot races might be just right for some of the current bowl games instead of all those misfit contests of mediocrity. They'd probably draw more spectators and get far better television ratings than some of those Quick Lane, AdvoCare, Royal Purple bowl games. Alas, the Tournament of Roses resur- rected the football game in 1916, and for the next 20 years the Pasadena extrava- ganza was it, changing its name to the Rose Bowl after the first game played in the new Rose Bowl stadium in 1923 fea- turing, yes, Penn State. OK, most of the older Penn State fans know this histori- cal fact because that was the school's first official bowl game, and the diehards also know the Nittany Lions lost to Southern Cal, 14-0. By the 1934 season, the Rose Bowl game was the pinnacle of college foot- ball, almost like playing for the nation- al championship, and it was all alone in soaking up nationwide publicity in the media, which at the time consisted of newspapers, magazines and a new medium called radio. So, that year the smart guys in Miami and New Orleans decided to get in on the New Year's Day action to help attract tourists to the warm Atlantic Ocean beaches and carefree atmosphere of Bourbon Street. The Orange and Sug- ar bowls both featured a Southern team as their host, with the foe coming from another re- gion of the country. On New Year's Day 1936, the Texas border town of El Paso launched the Sun Bowl, initially pitting two Southwestern small-college teams against each other before transforming over the next 30 years into a second-tier major-college attraction just behind the Gator Bowl. The big shots up north in Dallas must have been stunned by what their ple- beian Texas brethren did in that dusty border town, because the next season, 1936, they came up with the Cotton Bowl. In its first three years, the bowl featured a matchup between a major- college Texas team and an Eastern or Western foe. In the 1941 season, the winner of Southwest Conference TAKE IT TO THE BANK Jack- sonville's foot- ball stadium has had several names since it opened in August 1995. It was christened Ever- Bank Field in 2010. Photo by Robert Wilson