Inside The Huskies

At Rose Bowl, Huskies Likely Will Say Good Bye To An Old Friend

With UCLA trying to play elsewhere, UW might not be back to Pasadena any time soon.
Dan Raley|
The Rose Bowl stadium always offers an iconic look.
The Rose Bowl stadium always offers an iconic look. | Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images

For previous University of Washington football players, nothing will ever top a game at the Rose Bowl, with 100,000 people squeezed together in the stands, the sun setting against the backdrop of the nearby San Gabriel Mountains and the Huskies ahead on the scoreboard.

It's been one of the ultimate thrills for anyone involved with the UW, a program validator throughout all of these years and just a feel-good moment.

"I think it's one of the greatest venues in all of sports," said Husky offensive coordinator Jimmie Dougherty, who previously has coached at the stadium for both the UW and UCLA in his career.

The place helped make household names across college football out of the UW's Bob Schloredt, Jim Owens, Don James, Jacque Robinson and Steve Emtman.

The late and legendary Keith Jackson, the ABC broadcaster and even a one-time Husky play-by-play announcer, will be forever linked to the place that me memorably christened "the granddaddy of them all."

On Saturday night, the chance of sharing in this glorious sporting experience for a regular-season match-up likely will disappear for good for the Huskies (7-3 overall, 4-3 Big Ten) after they face UCLA (3-7, 3-4) in Pasadena with kickoff at 7:30 p.m.

Huskies tight end Devin Culp (83) celebrates after scoring a 2022 touchdown against UCLA at the Rose Bowl.
Huskies tight end Devin Culp (83) celebrates after scoring a 2022 touchdown against UCLA at the Rose Bowl. | Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

The main reason is tradition is no longer a protected species for college football that has become willing to let players pack up and leave at any time, fire coaches three games into a season and give up on conference alignments and subsequently rivalry games that go with them.

UCLA is attempting to abandon the 102-year-old Rose Bowl -- a place most schools would do just about anything for the right to play there just once -- in favor of the newer and much smaller SoFi Stadium.

One reason is Bruins football, which should be a major player because it operates out of Los Angeles, has been badly neglected.

Its fan base basically has quit on this team. Saturday's game will be lucky to draw a crowd of 30,000. Just 27,785 watched the UCLA season opener against Utah. A year ago, only 24,389 felt the need to see the Bruins host Fresno State.

UCLA once more is seeking a new football coach after firing DeShaun Foster. That would be someone who will be asked to shake up the roster. Try to instill life in the Bruins. And likely play in a new football stadium.

UW Jedd Fisch, who served as the Bruins' offensive coordinator and interim coach in 2017, prefers to remember only a glorious football atmosphere.

Don James had a 4-2 coaching record in Rose Bowl games for the UW.
Don James had a 4-2 coaching record in Rose Bowl games for the UW. | Long Photography-Imagn Images

"We're just excited about the chance to go out there," Fisch said. "I have talked to our team about that chance to play in that stadium and how cool it is."

Who knows when the Huskies will be back to a place that has hosted them 30 times either in the nation's oldest bowl game or for four-plus decades as a regular-season opponent for the Bruins.

Any future visits would have to be a deep run into a playoff bracket, with the Rose Bowl having moved on from its traditional Big Ten-Pac-12 match-up on New Year's Day that lasted from 1947 to 2023, with a few breaks along the way to host postseason encounters.

The Huskies have appeared in 15 Rose Bowl games and come away with a 7-7-1 record and a national championship won there on January 1, 1992.

The UW has had very little success in playing regular-season games against UCLA on this sacred ground.

Since 1982 when the Bruins left the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to make room for the arrival of the then Oakland Raiders and made the Rose Bowl their home, the Huskies have gone 3-12.

The UW has lost nine of its past 10 games played there, including 40-32 to UCLA by a Kalen DeBoer-coached team in 2022 during the Huskies' most recent visit.

Yet that hasn't dulled anyone's enthusiasm for playing there, especially this weekend, when another UW visit might be a long ways off.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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