The 74th Rose Bowl Game

The 74th Rose Bowl between USC and Michigan State was a fun game. Joe Ziemba of the When Football was Football Podcast joins us to discuss the game played in early January of 1988.

Roses smell sweet for Spartans 02 Jan 1988, Sat The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) Newspapers.com

The 1988 Rose Bowl was the 75th edition of the Rose Bowl game was a hard-fought exciting game played between the familiar match-up of Michigan State and USC. These teams had some familiarity with each other as they had opened the season on Labor Day evening in East Lansing as opponents. MSU won that contest 27-13 as they took advantage of three Trojan turnovers. Former Pittsburgh Steelers assistant George Perles was the head coach of the Spartans, and his leadership helped Michigan State record an 8-2-1 slate on the season. USC had Larry Smith as their head coach. Southern struggles out of the gate, losing 3 of their first four games before recovering to a respectable 8-3 record, including an upset of rival UCLA, who had Troy Aikman and Gaston Green. That win can be credited to a hustling USC QB Ridney Peete who ran down Bruin defender Eric Turner and what looked like would be an easy pick-six.

The defenses dominated this game. Michigan State linebacker and game most valuable player Percy Snow, led the charge with 17 unassisted tackles. His play and the agress Spartans forced five Trojan turnovers. On the flip side, MSU was powered by All-American running back Lorenzo White who produced 113 yards on the ground.

The game was tied early in the fourth quarter at 17.  Michigan State moved the ball into a game-winning field goal by John Langeloh with four minutes to play. Michigan State quarterback Bobby McAllister was nearly sacked, but somehow moved out of the pocket and found receiver Andre Rison at the sideline for a first down that kept the drive alive. USC had time to try to come back, and Trojans quarterback Rodney Peete led USC on a drive to the MSU 29-yard line with two minutes to play. But Peete fumbled the next snap, and Michigan State recovered before running out the clock. 
 The game marked the end of a partnership era where NBC televised the games as they had done so for 37 years. 

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

Banner photo is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons of an svg football image layed on some photos of Roses by Darin Hayes