The National Football Foundation has not yet been moved to induct Lone Star Dietz into the College Football Hall of Fame but the results of this year’s voting haven’t been released yet. I just learned that Dietz’s 1916 Rose Bowl win over Brown was historic in a way of which I was previously unaware. While it is well known that Washington State’s 14-0 defeat of Brown put West Coast football one the map, established the Rose Bowl, and the New Year’s Day football tradition. What I didn’t realize was that game was the first victory of a West Coast team over a team from east of the Alleghenies. Brown traveled the longest distance to play in a game to that point. The 1899 Carlisle Indians defeated the University of California in San Francisco for what was likely the previous longest distance traveled.
The Big Four, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Penn, rarely played games away from home other than when they played each other. So, it was to see that Penn played Oregon on New Year’s Day 1917 in Pasadena. But Penn was more flexible in playing games away from home than were the Big Three. In those days, Penn would generally play a road game against a team like Brown or Dartmouth and for several years participated in a home-and-away series with Michigan. So, adding a second road game was probably more easily accommodated by Penn than it would have been by the Big Three. Regardless, Penn became the second team east of the Alleghenies to lose to a West Coast team when they lost to Oregon 14-0 in the 1917 Rose Bowl.
Dallas boosters recently announced plans to relocate the College Football Hall of Fame from South Bend, IN to Dallas. Oil man T. Boone Pickens has reputedly agreed to put up the money to cover the Hall’s relocation costs. It remains to be seen if the College Football Hall of Fame would relocate from the homes of the Gipper and the Four Horsemen and the rest of the Irish legends.
Tags: College Football Hall of Fame, Dallas, South Bend, T. Boone Pickens
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