The 82nd Rose Bowl

Author and historian Joe Ziemba of the When Football was Football Podcast joins us to discuss the 1996 Rose Bowl game between USC and Northwestern. The people, plays, and great stories associated with the 70th Rose Bowl Game. Joe has a fantastic book on Chicago area pro football titled Bears versus Cardinals, that is an excellent piece of reading for any fan of football history!

The 82nd Edition of the Rose Bowl took place on January 1, 1996, when the Northwestern Wildcats faced the USC Trojans. Head Coach Gary Barnett’s Wildcats entered the fray with an outstanding 10-1 record. It had been 47 years since NW had made it to the Rose Bowl, and this time they did it on big wins over Notre Dame and Michigan. The Trojans of Coach John Robinson featured a well-balanced offense and stingy defense that recorded an 8-2-1 mark on their regular season dance card. Scoring was aplenty in this match-up. USC started it when their running back Woods plowed through the purple-clad defenders for a 1-yd run.
Northwestern replied when their man Darnell Autry had a TD stroll of his own from 3 yards out to knot the game at 7. In the second quarter, the Trojans struck again on a Barnum 21-yard pass from Brad Otton and later when Abrams booted a 30-yard field goal. USC opened the game a bit more when their defender McCutcheon scooped and scored a 53-yard fumble return. The Wildcats cut into the halftime lead when Gowins knocked through a 29-yard field goal with 0:02 left in the half to provide a score of USC 24, NW 10 at the intermission. In the third quarter, Gowins struck another 3-point kick, this time from 28-yards out, and followed it with an Autry 9-yard run to make it a five-point game when the two-point conversion failed.
USC padded the lead again on a Keyshawn Johnson 56-yard reception from an Otton pass. The Wildcats kept pressing when Steve Schnur scored on a 1-yd run and took the lead when Darnell Autry found the goal line chalk once again on a 2-yd run, but the conversion failed as NW led 32–31. It was all Southern Cal the rest of the way when Abrams booted a 46-yard field goal to regain the lead and put it away on a Delon Washington 2-yard run with 3 minutes left to give USC the 41–32 victory.

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.

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