1942 Rose Bowl

[Section 15]

I've been saving the attached description of the 1942 Rose Bowl for the beginning of the football season. It's a bit of vintage sports writing that contains all the breathless hyperbole common to that era. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do (well, except for the ending).

By my calculation, tonight's team is the 80th Duke football team to take the field since 1941. In a following post, I'll provide some context for the article and a few random thoughts for those who are interested.

1942 Rose Bowl 1.jpg
1942 Rose Bowl 2.jpg
1942 Rose Bowl 3.jpg
1942 Rose Bowl 4.jpg

[Section 15]

The scanned pages come from a pamphlet claiming to be a "complete action and pictorial story of Rose Bowl football." It is undated, but since the last game described is the 1945 Rose Bowl, I would guess the publication date is 1946.

The cover claims that it includes comments by, among others, Grantland Rice, Pop Warner, Wallace Wade, Frank Thomas, and A.A. Stagg. Quite a lineup.

The picture of Duke stadium on the second page does not appear to be of the actual game, but probably a game earlier in the season. If you look closely, the temporary wooden bleachers that were erected in the end zone and along the upper concourse for the bowl game are not in the picture. I remember the upper concourse bleachers still being there well into the 1960s (yes, I'm an old f@*t). Of course the stadium is full. It may be hard for some to comprehend, but that was not an uncommon event back then. Even I've been to games when the stadium was standing room only, like the Navy game in 1960.

The graphic on page three has always fascinated me. It is an obvious attempt to "score" a football game the way people score a baseball game. I've never seen this before, but perhaps some one has and would like to comment.

Section 15

[Section 15]

I've gotten comments that the jpegs are hard to read. I did scan them at a high resolution, but apparently the conversion to the bulletin board lowered the resolution. As a work around, I created 4 PDF files that are small enough to be posted, but don't trigger the size restrictions.

Here's #1:
1942 Rose Bowl 1.pdf

[Section 15]

Here's #2:

1942 Rose Bowl 2.pdf

[Section 15]

#3:

1942 Rose Bowl 3.pdf

[Section 15]

#4:

1942 Rose Bowl 4.pdf