Bump Elliott’s Participation in 5 Different Rose Bowls with Author Neal Rozendaal

The Rose bowl, the game that inspired the college football bowl season, has a long and storied history.

The stadium itself is 100 years old, and in celebration of it, Pigskin Dispatch is assembling some of the top historians and authors to share the memories, people and events that make the granddaddy of them all the special game that it is. Enjoy this Rose bowl memory from pigskindispatch.com.

Hello, my football friends. This is Darin Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history. And it is Rose Bowl Month.

We're having a great time learning about the history of the Rose bowl, bringing in an all star cast of guests to talk about this great historic venue for football. And tonight is no exception. We have an author that's been here about a couple months ago talking about his book on Duke Slater. It's Neil Rosendahl.

Welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Hey, thanks for having me back. It's good to be here.

Yeah, Neil, we had such a great time talking about your book a couple months ago on Duke Slater. Just a great, you know, collegian and a great football player.

And you know, you have some other football books and tonight we'd like to talk about another one because it has a lot of ties into the Rose bowl. And I'll let you introduce the subject of that book and some of the statistics about them.

Yeah, so my, my most recent book came out a little over a year ago and it's a biography on Bump Elliott. It was his name, Bump Elliott. And of course, I come into it as a Hawkeye, a University of Iowa graduate and fan.

And many Hawkeye fans know Bump Elliott as the longtime athletic director at the University of Iowa. But he had an incredible career before that.

In particular, he spent a lot of time at the University of Michigan and he really had an indelible impact on two Big Ten institutions, both at Michigan and at Iowa. And, and he also had a little bit, he had a little bit, spent a little bit of time at Purdue as well.

So he had all connections all around the Big Ten.

But probably the thing that Bump Elliott is, is most known for around the Big Ten is that he is the only man to, to have participated in the Rose bowl in five different capacities. He was a player, an assistant coach, a head coach, an assistant athletic director and a head athletic director.

He loved the Rose bowl, and he's an important part of its history, and he's a great, great man, and I love talking about him.

And that was one of the reasons why I wanted to write that book, because he's an incredibly accomplished man, but also just really an outstanding guy.

Wow.

With that many visits and that many capacities at the Rose bowl, it's almost like, you know, he was an employee of the Rose bowl there that, that often. So I'm intrigued. Can you talk a little bit about each capacity, like what team he was with and things like that?

Yeah, absolutely. So Bump Elliott, he. He. He got his start collegiately, actually, at Purdue University. He played a couple of seasons at Purdue. And it's.

And then bump left for a couple of years to serve in service during World War II. He was a lieutenant in the U.S. marine Corps. And he actually spent some time in China serving during that time. And when he finished and he.

He was done, he wound up at the University of Michigan. He came back to the states.

He really had no reason to go back to Purdue because everybody he kind of came up with and through they had all been enlisted or had been deployed, and there was nobody sort of back there that he knew. So he had no real reason to go back to West Lafayette.

And his younger brother, Pete Elliot, actually had gone to Purdue, had gone to Michigan, excuse me. And had always sent Bump Elliott letters about how much he liked Michigan, how he liked playing there.

And so Bumps had said he always wanted to play with his, play football with his brother. His brother was, you know, not only was Pete Elliott Bump's younger brother, he's also really his best friend.

And he decided to go to Ann Arbor to join him. And the Elliott brothers spent a couple years there at Michigan.

And Bump Elliott was. Was a truly great football player in his day. He was a phenomenal athlete.

Now, what position did he play at Michigan?

Well, it's. It's kind of a fascinating story because he was right on. On. On this transition where prior to World War II, players played both ways.

And what they did was, you know, they. They did something sort of fascinating with Fritz Chrysler.

He took advantage of some of these relaxed substitution rules that were enacted during World War II. Prior to World War II, if a player left the game, they could not re. Enter the game until a quarter had passed. That was part of the rules of it.

You couldn't just have free substitution. Well, they suspended that rule during World War II because during World War II, there was a lack of players.

Most of the kids were in the service and they needed, you know, they needed warm bodies. A lot of these programs were shutting down for lack of manpower. So they said, let's just get rid of these substitution rules.

So they suspended them for a while. And it was Fritz Chrysler, the head coach at Michigan, really realized, you know, now these substitution rules are. Are suspended.

There are a bunch of guys who came back from the war and they had, you know, almost too many players. So Fritz Chrysler solved this problem by having players play on both sides. Instead of having players play on both sides of the ball, he platoon them.

He had an offensive unit and a defensive unit. And that was really the first time that had been tried at Sort of a major level in college football history. What's interesting about.

About that whole setup is Bob Elliot was the only player on the Michigan football team who still played on both sides of the ball for the entire year. So at the beginning of the year, there were two players, Bump Elliott and Jack Weisenberger, who played on both sides of the ball.

With every change of possession, nine guys would go off the field, and then nine new players would come onto the field. You know, offense and defense, they'd switch. Jack and Bump Elliott were the only two who sort of stayed on the field.

Well, by the middle of the season, Jack Weisenberger, he got a little bit dinged up, and so they decided to substitute for him as well.

So he was still one of those players who played both ways. For a team that did not have many players who played both ways, Bump was one of the few guys that did it.

The magic of the Mad Magicians was they really were one of the first teams to take advantage of sort of the platoon system of going offense and defense.

Okay, yeah, that's a great story. Like you said, so they're sort of the ones that made it in vogue to have double platoons coming in.

They played USC, and they did pretty well. They won 49. 0.

I'd say that's pretty well.

They had this rivalry where they would not play, but they both wound up winning games, blowing out opponents, and, you know, they were both undefeated. And the Associated Press Poll was sort of toggling back and forth who's number one in the country.

One week it was Michigan, the next week was Notre Dame. It just depended on who had a good game that week.

Notre Dame wound up finishing number one in the nation on the final after their their regular season finale. Notre Dame then, as they often did, finished the regular season against usc, and they beat USC convincingly.

And the Associated Press put Notre Dame number one. Now that was back in the day when the AP poll stopped at the end of the regular season.

So the AP poll was done and Notre Dame did not go to a bowl game. They were an independent, so forth.

But Michigan got to go to the Rose bowl, they qualified, they were undefeated, and lo and behold, they played the Pacific coast champion, which was usc. And they were very motivated to beat USC by a larger score than Notre Dame had. Notre Dame beat them, I believe something like 38 to 17 or something.

And Michigan came out there and put it on USC and wound up winning 49 to nothing, which tied the record for the most lopsided result in Rose bowl history, going back to the very first Rose bowl, which Michigan won over Stanford by an identical 49 to nothing score. And so they actually did something unprecedented. The AP decided to revote afterwards in sort of an unofficial capacity.

And in the revote, Michigan was actually voted number one by two to one margin over Notre Dame, which they immediately said, this is unofficial. Notre Dame is still our national champion.

Michigan or Notre Dame is one of the great debates in sports history. But. But yeah, Michigan obviously did very well.

And Bump Elliott had a great experience in his, his first appearance in the Rose bowl, he caught a touchdown pass and enjoyed a lopsided victory over the Trojans.

Wow. Very, very nice. That. Yeah, that was a great team, like you said. So it would have been interesting to see those two teams play too.

So, okay, so there's one capacity that Bump Elliott's in there. So. So. But what comes up next for in his career going to the Rose Bowl?

Well, he was, like I said, he was a great player. He played. He actually played three sports at Michigan. He also played basketball and baseball. He's actually a very talented baseball player. But he.

Back in those days, they had what was called the College All Star Game, which in the College All Star Game, basically The the departing senior class across college football would assemble an all star team and they play an exhibition game in Chicago against the reigning NFL champions. So the team that won the most recent NFL championship would play this team of college all stars.

But Bump was injured in a practice in a scrimmage a couple of days before the game and was not able to actually play in the game. He suffered a bad knee injury which caused him to be hospitalized. He had to have surgery on his knee.

And long story short, any professional football career was sort of out the window. He had been drafted by the Detroit Lions, and they certainly had some interest in him, but he decided professional football is not for me.

And then he kind of looked, what, what's, where's my career going to take me? And he sort of fell into what a lot of great athletes fall into, which is coaching. And he was given an opportunity to coach.

He's offered an assistant coaching position at Oregon State. He spent three years at Oregon State as an assistant coach.

What was kind of fun about that was when he started at Oregon State, he was an assistant coach. And his younger brother Pete was also an assistant coach on the same staff.

So he and Pete were assistant coach on this, on the same staff for two years. And then Bump wanted to come back to the Midwest. That was where his family was.

And he was offered an opportunity to become an assistant coach at the University of Iowa under for Seversky. For Sebastevsky was named the head coach at Iowa. For Sebastievsky was a Michigan man. He had played at Michigan several years before.

Bump Elliott, he played when Tom Harmon was there. But Forrest Zabashevsky, he was filling out his coaching staff. He needed an assistant coach.

He knew of Bump Elliott and hired Bump as his assistant coach. So after a few years, Bump served as an assistant for five years at the University of Iowa.

And as, as luck would have it, the Hawkeyes played Oregon State, which was the the team that Bump had been an assistant for several years earlier. But the Hawkeyes were able to come away with a victory over Oregon State. And Bump Elliott was.

Wow. Okay. And so you gained a second victory too. A second visit, different capacity, and a big win for Iowa. 35, 19 is the score of that Rose Bowl. So. Wow.

So that, that's, that's got to be pretty cool to, to go back to the same stadium and, and you know, get two victories there. Okay. So little did he know that maybe he'd be going there again. So what's, what's his third capacity to visit the Rose Bowl? And.

Well, so Bump Elliott was considered to be one of the top coaching prospects in the country as an assistant coach. He, he was a great recruiter, phenomenal recruiter.

And you know, Eveshevsky always said that if he was trying to close the deal on, on a recruit, he just tried to get Bump Elliott alone with one. On one with the recruit's mother. He's like. And Bump Elliot would sell her on having. Sending her son to Michigan. He's like, that's all I needed to do.

Bump Bump Elliot was the closer. Like he was, he was, he was very charming. He was well spoken, he was well dressed, he was good looking. He, he was very humble about his achievements.

But also people knew he was one of the, the great football players of his time. He was an all American and so forth.

And so a lot of people thought, you know, he might be a potential successor at Iowa to succeed for Sevischevsky as head coach should. For Sevischevsky ever decide to get out of coaching. But Bump really had his choice of jobs and he was called back to his alma mater.

He wound up going back to the University of Michigan as an assistant coach under Benny Oosterbahn and who is his position coach when he played. And it was.

There was never any formal agreement, but when he went to Michigan, it was pretty well known that he was a potential head coach in waiting.

He was only in his 30s at that point, but he was the head coach of the Michigan Wolverines, one of the story programs in college football history.

And it seems like being the head coach of Michigan, boy, he had it all, you know, he just had, you know, the world at his feet and the world was his oyster. In truth, Michigan was a bit of a dumpster fire. I Mean, it was the Michigan program was in a bit of disarray when he took over.

They're losing most of their talent.

As bad as they were defensively, offensively they were, they're actually worse because they were running the single wing offense which by that time was kind of antiquated.

And part of the reason why Michigan wanted to hire Bump Elliott is because they wanted Bump to install the wing t offense that Evashevsky had used to great success at Iowa and he had learned that under Forrest Ibiszewski.

But the one thing that I always talk about with, with Bump at Michigan is it's hard for people to believe, but Michigan did not believe in recruiting. They didn't believe in recruiting.

They, they, they believe that Fritz Chrysler, who at that time was the athletic director, said that he, he, he hated the thought of the, the school choosing the boy instead of the boy choosing the school. And so they didn't believe in recruiting.

But you know who did believe in recruiting was Woody Hayes at Ohio State and Duffy Doherty at Michigan State. And they were really starting to beat Michigan up on the field because they were taking all the best talent.

And Bump came in, he said, look guys, we gotta recruit. If we don't recruit, we're not, you know, we're not going to get anywhere. And you know, for him to walk in and say that was a huge change.

But also you can't just walk in and say, okay, we're recruiting now. This was, there wasn't rivals.com there wasn't. How do you find recruits?

Well, the way you found recruits in those days was you had alumni in various cities essentially scouting talent for you and trying to find where all the best talent was. Michigan didn't have any of that apparatus set up.

And you know, when Bump took over at Michigan he said, look guys, it's going to be a, I'm going to need five years to rebuild this program. And nobody questioned it because that's how far behind Michigan was on the curve in terms of competing with, with these, with these big schools.

It's amazing to think now, but again, there wasn't the portal. You couldn't turn programs around that quickly. Freshmen were ineligible.

Like even if you recruited a kid to campus, he had to wait a year before he could even play. Like this was gonna be A huge rebuilding job. And they took their lumps for the first few years.

They, they lost one game that by a single point, 21, 20 to Purdue. They, Michigan scored a touchdown late in the game, went for two in the win. They could have had the tie because in those days there was no overtime.

They could have kicked the extra point, gotten a tie and stayed undefeated. They went for two in the win because they said we're going to win and play came up short. So they wound up losing by one.

But they wound up winning the Big Ten title outright, capped off by a memorable victory in Columbus, Ohio over Woody Hayes and Ohio State for the Big Ten title. They won the de facto Big Ten title game 17 and nothing over Ohio State, which sent them to the, to the Rose Bowl.

And Bump, in his third capacity, this time as the head coach at Michigan, he went back to the Rose bowl and would you believe, lo and behold, faced Oregon State again, faces a whole the old team he coached and the team he. He beat as an assistant coach at Iowa. And they went to play Ohio State or excuse me, Oregon State in the, in the Rose Bowl.

And they won this one decisively. They won that one in a lopsided manner.

And he was the only man in Big Ten history to do so, and I believe the only, still the only man in Big Ten history to record Rose bowl wins as a player and a coach of the same Big Ten team. A couple have done it on the Pac12 side, but bumps the only one who, who's ever done that as a Big Ten coach.

And that was a huge victory for him and, and really one of the great teams in Michigan history.

Yeah. Wow. Okay, so. So now he's 3, 0 in his visits to the Rose bowl with teams he's involved with.

So he's got a pretty good record going here with the Rose Bowl. You know, I can see why he wanted to keep going Back. All right, so. So tell us about his fourth capacity going to the Rose Bowl.

Yes, well, he continued to coach for several more years, but really once, once, you know, they won and then he kind of turned the program around. He had really turned his attention to what's my next move. And he did not want, he, he's not someone who wanted to be in coaching forever.

A lot of coaches in, in those days felt it was a young man's profession. And he, he started to think, well, well what am I going to do next?

And what he really felt was his next career move was to go into athletic administration and was to become, go in the front office and be an athletic director. So Bump, having been at Michigan and having been a star at Michigan, I think the, the athletic director of Michigan at that time was Fritz Chrysler.

And I think, you know, Fritz Chrysler had been the head coach at Michigan before he became athletic director.

And prior to Fritz Chrysler becoming Michigan's ad, the previous athletic director was Fielding Yost, who's also the head football coach turned athletic director.

So I think there was a lot of thought that, you know, Bump Elliott as the head football coach might be in a position to become the athletic director and succeed Fritz Chrysler's Michigan's athletic director when Chrysler stepped down. And I think he never really publicly came out, say, said that, but everything I've gathered is that is really kind of the job he wanted.

That was really what he saw himself potentially becoming was the athletic director at the University of Michigan and maybe trying to help lead them to a Rose Bowl.

Again.

Michigan was looking for a successor and Bump was considered by some to be a favorite to potentially get that job. But Michigan decided to throw a curveball and instead of hiring Bump, they hired Don Canham, who was then the track coach, but who also ran a.

A multi million dollar sporting goods business. And sort of that business background was kind of what I think attracted them to can them over Bump Elliott.

Bump Elliott was a very stable, steady personality, whereas Canem was a butt kicker, a mover and a shaker and a guy to shake things up. And I think there was a sense at Michigan that things had gotten a little bit stagnant there and they wanted a little more energy.

There'd be a little bit of animosity there that Bump Elliott would sort of say, heck with you. You know, heck with Michigan. But that's not who Bump Elliott was. He was such a good guy and a selfless guy. He was not a guy with a lot of ego.

He went to Don Canham after the season. He basically said to Don, can I be your number two? Can I be your assistant athletic director? And Don Cannon was like, absolutely.

Don Cannon knew as well as anybody that, you know, Bump Elliott was as qualified for his job as he was. So Don Cam's like, I'd love to have you as my number two and, And. And put you on staff here. He said, if we can find a good football coach, it's done.

And it was Bump Elliot who said, well, let's look for initial successors. And Bump Elliott is the one who put in a call down in Miami of Ohio to Bo Schembechler.

He picked up Bo Schembeckler at the airport and hosted him in his house, drove him around town, showed him around Ann Arbor.

And it was really Bump who vouched for Canem to bow and for Bo to Canem in the sense of saying, you know, he told Don Canham, I think this Bo Schembeckler is a good coach. I think he. He's the kind of guy who could succeed here. And he also told Bo Schembechler, who is concerned about Canem being a new athletic director.

He said, listen, Don can him is going to be. He's going to be the kind of athletic director who's going to get you what you want.

He's going to be the kind of athletic director who's going to be able to help you build a program, which, you know, Bump didn't always have access to the resources that. That some, you know, other coaches had. And so Bo Schembechler was named as the Bump Elliott successor.

Now, people have always suggested, well, maybe Bump Elliot was fired, but that was not at all the Case Bump was ready to move into athletic direction, athletic administration. He wanted to become an athletic director. And he was just, you know, he. He thought it was the right time to move out of coaching.

They played for the Big Ten title against Ohio State. And he left a lot of talent for Bo Schembechler.

Part of the reason that bumps people have seen, you know, people have. Have underestimated bumps tenure at. As a head coach, and sort of looked down on it. Bump's final game against Ohio State.

Michigan and Ohio State were both playing for the. For the Big Ten title. And it was bumping Woody Hayes. And, you know, it was. It was. It was a good game for the first half.

I mean, it was 14, 14 going a minute before halftime. Ohio State scored just before the break. Ohio State goes up 24 to 14 going into halftime.

In the third quarter, Ohio State gets another touchdown, and they go up 24 to 27 to 14 going into the fourth. And bump says, well, this is for the big ten title. This is for a shot to go to the Rose Bowl.

There's a shot for potentially to play for a national title. He starts calling for passes, desperately passing the football, and, you know, he's taking risky chances to try to win the game against all odds.

Well, what happens is Ohio State picks off these risky passes, and Ohio State winds up scoring a bunch of touchdowns and sort of putting it on Michigan. And the final score looks much more lopsided than the competitiveness that was that game.

But that game is always remembered because Michigan wound up winning, scored a touchdown in the final seconds of the game. Michigan goes ahead 50 to 14, and Woody Hayes goes for two and doesn't get it. But Ohio State wins 50 to 14.

And according to legend, this is never actually verified by anybody, but the story that emerged from that was someone asking Woody Hayes, why did you go for 2? Up 40 to 14. And Woody Hayes's response was, because I couldn't go for three. And. And that.

That's just become sort of one of the classic lines in terms. In terms of the Michigan Ohio State animosity that exists and also kind of shows a little bit something about Woody Hayes.

Like, he was not afraid of running up the score on a guy like Bump Elliott, who would never run up the score on anybody. I mean, Bump Elliott was a gentleman who would, you know, when he had an opportunity to run up the score in 64.

And he did not do that, because that's not who Bump Elliott was. But it was a notable game because the following year, of course, Bump steps down. Bomb Beckler takes over.

The following year, Ohio State and Michigan are playing again for the Big Ten title. And Shem Beckler reminded his team repeatedly of the 50 to 14 loss and of how Woody Hayes ran up the scoring.

And Michigan was able to turn the tables, knock off Ohio State, and what was considered the upset of the century. And Michigan beats Ohio State. Michigan gets to go to the Rose bowl clinches.

The Big Ten title is one of the great victories in college football history and Michigan football history, certainly. And after the game, Bo Schembechler awarded the game ball to Bump Elliott. He brought Bump Elliott in, and he gave Bump the game ball.

And he said, you know, I won with your guys. I won with your team, basically, because, remember, freshmen were ineligible.

Bo Schemacher actually suffered a heart attack on the eve of the game and was not able to coach. And what's. What's fascinating about it is, is there was a little bit of whispers talk of, with.

With Bo Schembeckler not being able to coach the team, maybe Bump could coach the team. Like maybe Bump would, You know, maybe Bump would serve as the interim in the.

And it'd be a chance for Bump to have his last game be something that wasn't the 50 to 14 blowout. You know, that was, in fact, Bumps last game. But. But Bump said, you know what? This isn't my team. It's not my place to. To do that.

And so Bump had one of his coordinators serve as the interim coach for the Rose Bowl. But Michigan, facing usc, did suffer their first ever Rose bowl defeat in that game.

Yeah, and that was a pretty close game, too. It was a 10 to 3 score, so a lot of great defense was played in that game. So, yeah, it wasn't like they got blown out or anything.

They were in it till the end, so. All right, so you can imagine what.

It'D be like to have your head coach suffer a heart attack on the eve of the game. I mean, this was not the best circumstance for Michigan to play. It's Rose bowl gaming issue. Usc.

So they hung in there, but ultimately they did take a loss, which was Michigan's first loss in the Rose Bowl. And that is something that, you know, Bump had had. He never noted it, but it was well known before the game.

A big thing. But. But yeah, a few years later, Michigan obviously did lose with.

With Jim Beckler in the hospital recovering from a heart attack, Michigan suffered their first Rose bowl loss, but neverthele in a fourth capacity. Was. Was a heck of a thing for Bob.

Okay. I mean, definitely another great visit, though. And anytime you get to go to California in the middle of winter, that's always a good time. So.

Okay, so what. What's his fifth capacity and what. What happened there?

Well, yeah, so Bump was only the assistant athletic director at Michigan for about a year and a half. People quickly realized that he'd make a great athletic director as well.

And I actually think Bump probably would have stayed at Michigan as an assistant athletic director for a while.

Forrest Ibiszewski, who had been head coach in Iowa when Bump was an assistant coach there. Evie had stepped down as a head coach and become the athletic director. Forrest Ibiszewski is a phenomenal coach.

And his tenure as athletic director was not as successful. He was a divisive athletic director, particularly with his head football coaches. There was sort of a.

A real atmosphere in the program of, you support me, the head coach, or you support the football, you support me as athletic director, or you support my football coach. There's a divisiveness there. There was a lot of disharmony.

And it was actually Evie who, in one of his first interviews after resigning, who said they should bring in Bump Elliott. And the president at the University of Iowa at the time said that was the first time he thought, oh, Bump Elliott. I.

You know, everyone remembered Bump from having been an assistant coach in Iowa. Everybody loved Bump Elliott. Everybody rem. You know, people had talked about him maybe being Evie's successor as head football coach.

Everybody loved Bump. He was a guy that got along with everybody.

And it was thought that Bump Elliott would be the perfect guy to bring together the football side, the football coaching side, as well as the EV side, which is the Michigan, you know, the Michigan side, and so forth. He'd be able to sort of bring everybody together. They thought Bump would kind of be that unifier that. That Iowa needed at that time.

And again, you remember at Michigan, they passed Bump Elliott over as athletic director because they needed a mover and a shaker and somebody really kind of. But Bump was just a very stable, calming influence.

Well, that's what I would needed, because Iowa's athletic department was kind of, you know, it was divided and it was. It was a house torn. And Bump came in and was offered the job.

And from Bump Elliott's perspective, he said, you know, he had a lot of personal and professional friends in Iowa City that he'd known from his coat from his assistant coaching days.

His wife Barbara had actually said, you know, we came back to Iowa City when Bump was hired as athletic director, and I went back to my old bridge club, and they welcomed me right back in. And there was all the same players that there were since we left town 15 years ago.

So Bump knew a lot of people personally and professionally in Iowa City, and that made the Iowa job as athletic director particularly appealing to him. It was a chance for him to run his own program, which was exciting.

They were kind of in the basement of the Big Ten, you know, and the Michigan folks said, why? You know, Bump, why are you going to Iowa? Iowa will never be successful. And Bumpatti said, no, you're wrong.

I was there when we went to the Rose Bowl. He's like, we went. We were successful before, and we can be successful again. So he had had that taste of success at Iowa as an assistant under Evie.

He knew Iowa could do it again. Well, it took some doing. It took a while, I'm not gonna lie.

He hired a guy who wasn't very well known outside of the state of Texas, a coach from North Texas by the name of Hayden Fry. And he hired Hayden Fry and brought him up to Iowa. And he.

He publicly told the, you know, the reporters and his bosses, he says, this is the last football coach I'll ever hire. And Hayden. Hayden Fry, afterwards, asked Bump, he said, why did you say I'm the last football coach you'll ever hire?

And Bump said, you're the third football coach I'm hiring now. I've hired two and had to fire them both. He's like, if you don't work out, neither will I.

And basically he was saying, if you get fired, they're gonna fire. They're gonna be looking for a new athletic director, too. So he was obviously very hopeful Hayden Fry would work out.

And for those who know college football and Hayden Fry's impact, he certainly worked out at the University of Iowa. He turned the Hawkeye football program around. He. Hayden actually led the Hawkeyes to three Rose Bowls in.

And Iowa, again, they lost all three of those Rose Bowls under Hayden Fry. They weren't able to win one for him as an athletic director.

And I really had a remarkable run of success there, despite the fact that in the athletic director chair, his coaches could never bring home a victory in the Rose Bowl.

Wow. It really is amazing. I didn't think of that. Six decades. That's great. Great stuff, Neil. Now, I guess, you know, you. You whet our appetite.

Why don't you give us a name of your book and where folks can get it at?

Yeah, absolutely. My book, like I said, I wrote a biography on Bump Elliott.

It's entitled Bump the Best of College Athletics, and it can be found on Most booksellers like Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble or you can buy directly from me. I'd love that. If anybody wants to buy it straight from me, I'm always welcoming of that. You can go to Bumpelliot.com bumped Elliot. Elliot.

Two L's, two T's.

Elliot's a hard one to spell, but to bump Elliott.com, you can go there and find the book for sale there, and I'd be happy to sell a copy, sign a copy to you and, and what have you. But it was a really fun project to do to write a book about such an incredible guy who again, has such an amazing history at the Rose Bowl.

Yeah. Wow. I can tell you're very passionate about him and you're.

Your knowledge of him is very extensive and we really are glad that you shared it with us today and, you know, help us celebrate this Rose bowl month because you know what, What a better figure than Bump Elliott to celebrate the rose bowl with six decades. You know, that's, that's, you know, 60% of the. All the Rose Bowls right there. You know, he was involved and so not his time.

Probably more higher percentage than that. So great, great stuff and really appreciate you coming on and sharing with us today, Neil.

Yeah, no, it was great. Thanks for having me.

And I always love talking about Bump because, you know, the thing about Bump Elliott was he was really the subtitle of the book, the Best of College Athletics. He really believed in college athletics and he said, you know, I spent my, my entire career in college sports. He didn't intend it.

That way, but he wound up spending his whole career in, in college athletics.

And he really believed in, in what it, what it could be and essentially what it, you know, what it could be in terms of a positive experience for, for the people, not only the, the athletes who go on to play professionally, but those who don't and who wind up, you know, learning lessons and teamwork and leadership from it, who go on to, to be successful in business lives, professional careers and whatever else. He believed in college athletics, and I know, you know, as sports evolves, there becomes increasing cynicism in that, but he never shared that.

He always believed that, that college athletics was special and that the Rose bowl is a special part of college athletics.

And so, you know, it's, it was, it was great to, to write about someone who again, not only was a great professional, but also I interviewed over 60 people for the book who knew him at various points in his life. And this is the honest truth. Nobody had a bad thing to say about Bump Elliott.

They all, you know, as a, as a professional, as a person, you know, you would think someone would be upset with him sometime about something, but he was just, he was such a classy guy, such a dignified guy, and he carried himself in such an impressive way that he was, he was the kind of guy who really represents what college athletics is all about, what college athletics should be about. So it was, it was, it was a fun project to do for sure.

Sounds like a phenomenal human being in great football person and sure glad that you did all that work and recorded a history of, of this great man in college football and football history in general and have it in your book. So, so thank you for preserving that football history.

No, absolutely. And thanks for having me on. I love talking about it, so I, I appreciate having an outlet like this to, to talk about, talk about this stuff.

It's, it's, it's wonderful and I appreciate what you do.

Oh, well, thank you and we hope to have you on again real soon on some other topics, which we'll talk about here lot. Neil Rosendal and his book on Bump Elliott. Once again. Why don't you give the title one more time, Neil?

It's Bump Elliott, the Best of College Athletics. And you can find it online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble or@bumpell Elliott.com.

We'Re taking a peek over at the chains and the down marker. It's fourth and long. We're gonna have to punt the ball and get on out of here. But we'll have another series tomorrow for your football history.

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