The first New Year's Day game in Rose Bowl stadium was the 1923 game between Southern California and Penn State. The Trojans bested the Nittany Lions 14-3 in front of 43,000 who showed up to see the game in the brand-new horseshoe-shaped venue. Over at the SB Nation main page The Historical takes a look at the story of this famous stadium and how it came to be built. It is a monument to the sports' first great era and, in it's own way, is as emblematic of that time as much as billion-dollar television contracts are of today's.
The Rose Bowl Stadium was built during college football's great stadium boom of the 1920s and the story of the historic venue's construction is a tale of the sport's first big-time era.
