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V S . S O U T H E R N C A L I F O R N I A Still, the 19 players were in a festive mood as the 29-member travel party made its way west in a six-day train trip through Chicago, with a visit to the Grand Canyon, before arriving on Christmas Eve. What's surprising is that Penn State had to share the Cali- fornia spotlight with two of its East- ern rivals. In games that were set up after the 1922 season began, West Virginia had a game on Christmas Day in San Diego against Gonzaga, and Pitt played Stanford in Palo Alto on Dec. 30. Those games did not gen- erate as much national publicity be- cause the Pasadena game, then officially called the East-West Tour- nament Football Game, had been around since 1902 as part of the Tournament of Roses festivities sponsored by the Pasadena Valley Hunt Club. It would be another few years before the name of the game was changed, and therein are several other firsts for 1923. A new 57,000-seat stadium opened in the fall of 1922 in Pasadena's Arroyo Secco section, and that's where it still sits today with a capacity of 92,542. Harlan "Dusty" Hall, a reporter from the Pasadena News who moonlighted as the press agent for the Tournament of Roses, came up with the now-famous name that year be- cause the stadium was similar in de- sign to the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Conn. This also was the first time the Univer- sity of Southern California played in the New Year's Day game, too, but it wasn't the initial choice. California, the three-time Pacific Coast Conference champion, was invited as the host team. Cal turned down the offer, and USC, whose only defeat in eight games was to Cal, 12-0 – in the first game played in the new stadium in late October –accepted. The USC- Penn State pairing was volatile be- cause there was bad blood between Bezdek and USC's coach, Elmer "Gloomy Gus" Henderson, dating from Bezdek's days as coach at Ore- gon, and it would come to a head on the field before the game. Penn State had watched the Rose Parade in the morning, returned to its hotel and took taxis to the stadium. There was no police escort, and an unexpected traffic jam forced the taxis to plow over lawns to get close, and the players still had to walk a mile down the gorge to reach the stadium. When the team was 45 minutes late for the 2:15 p.m. kickoff, a shouting match and near fistfight erupted, as Gloomy Gus accused Bezdek of deliberately holding up the game as a psychological ploy and to avoid the hot Los Ange- les sun. A less-than-capacity crowd announced as 43,000 watched as the Lions took a 3-0 lead in the first quarter, but fa- vored USC dom- inated the game and won, 14-3, in the fading twilight and darkness of Pasadena. One more first, sort of. It was the first Rose Bowl game to be broadcast on the radio, by station KHJ, but the technology at the time limited the audience, and it is not officially recognized as the first radio broad- cast. – L.P. A new Penn State football book by Lou Prato with a forward by Adam Taliaferro The Remarkable Journey of the 2012 Nittany Lions Price: $14.95 plus shipping Published by Triumph Books (soft cover) Autographed copies available via louprato@comcast.net or through Lou Prato & Associates at 814-954-5171 Autographed copies of Lou's book We Are Penn State: The Remarkable Journey of the 2012 Nittany Lions are still available via louprato@comcast.net or through Lou Prato & Associates at 814-954-5171. Price: $19.95 plus tax where applicable and shipping HUGO BEZDEK Paterno Pattee Library Archives

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