20th Rose Bowl Game

The 1934 Rose Bowl history is looked at along with the people and events that made it an historic event in the story of the stadium.

How do you upset a favorite in a big game? Create turnovers. Getting a tough Stanford squad to cough up the ball is precisely what Columbia Coach Lou Little put together in a great defensive game plan. The Lions, heavy underdogs, played strong defense and forced multiple fumbles to end Stanford drives. Stanford was undefeated, while the Lions had suffered a single loss on the season to a rival, Fritz Crisler's Princeton Tigers.
The game, played on January 1, 1934, had a sparse crowd of 35,000 entertained in a low-scoring slug match. This 20th edition of the game had the lowest attendance in the Rose Bowl game history since the Rose Bowl Stadium was built in 1922. The Great Depression and the heavy rainfall in California in the days leading up to the big game attributed to the low attendance. The Boston Globe described the field conditions on December 31 as being "a large damp body of water with a few miscellaneous bits of lumber sticking out at each end."
The field condition improved a bit in 24 hours with the help of the local Pasadena fire department. The rescue team sent their equipment to the stadium and used their large pumps to extract water from the playing surface. But the sod was still soggy, and a pretty sloppy track as the rain continued on game day. This may have leveled out the virtual playing field as the Stanford Cardinal was considered by many to be the superior team. It was hard to keep one footing, and gain leverages against the opponent. The contest came down to one historic drive. 
The swamp of a field rendered the game scoreless after the first quarter expired. Just into the second period, the Lions found their footing. With the ball on the Stanford 17-yard line, Columbia QB Cliff Montgomery has near-perfect execution of a well-timed trick play named KF-79. Montgomery would turn and slip the ball to Al Barabas. For this play, he would then abruptly fake another hand-off to Ed Brominski, who ran in the opposite direction of Barabas. While the Indians went for Montgomery and Brominski, Barabas scooted around the defensive flank to score for Columbia. With the PAT successful, the Lions had a 7-0 lead.
Stanford was a good team and still had the crew of the "Vow Boys," who took an oath to each other so as not to lose to USC during their careers on the Stanford team. They accomplished that mission but trying to figure out a way through the opponents of the Columbia defense, and the gushy Rose Bowl turf was another matter. The stars of the Indians did play well, though, with tailback Bobby Grayson totaling 152 yards on 28 carries. Columbia held on to their lead and won the game, 7–0. The victory was one of the most significant upsets in Rose Bowl history.  Cliff Montgomery was chisen retroactively as the game's MVP.
Columbia Coach Lou Little's raised his standing as the Lions' greatest coach thus far in the school's history. In an ironic twist, the Columbia upset and rerailing of Stanford's perfect season afforded the National Championship to be retroactively given to Princeton by most experts.
The Rose Bowl victory and appearance by Columbia may be the last time that an Ivy School would win and maybe even play in a post-season game, according to a recent talk with Harvard football historian Dick Friedman.

A Very Special thanks to information obtained from the following brilliant internet sites: Bleacher Report, Newspapers.com, the Sports Reference's family of website databases & Stathead.com.

Banner photo is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons of Notre Dame football players 1924 - Don Miller, Harry Stuhldreher, Jim Crowley, and Elmer Layden.