On January 1, 1926, the mighty Washington Huskies strode onto the pristine turf of the Rose Bowl, certain that they would end another dominant season with another Rose Bowl victory. Washington is 10-0-1 this season, winning by scores of 56-0, 59-0, 64-2 and 108-0 (real). Their opponent was an underdog school in the South that only received an invitation to the prestigious Rose Bowl invitational game after four other blue-blood colleges declined.
But then the University of Alabama, an out-of-the-way school, won the Rose Bowl, sending shockwaves through the college football world and reverberating louder than ever.
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On January 1, 2026, the same Alabamians will be wearing the same crimson and white as their ancestors, running onto the still-beautiful Pasadena grass to face a school that, until about 15 months ago, was the definition of a college football doormat. Granted, Indiana didn’t sneak up on anyone quite like Alabama did in 1926 — the raw regular-season record and No. 1 ranking took care of that — but the Hoosiers’ emergence as the “granddaddy of them all” heralded similarly dramatic changes to come in college football.
In 1926, Alabama rallied and defeated the then-undefeated Washington team 20-19 to win the Rose Bowl. (Courtesy Paul W. Bryant Museum)
Back in the 1920s, the world of elite-level college football included the Pacific Coast, the upper Midwest and the Northeast. Stanford University, University of Michigan, Penn State University and the Ivy League. Anywhere south of Ohio and Pennsylvania – well, they did play football, but just like the land kids played football, there was a lot of fighting but not a lot of skill. At least that was the view commonly held in athletic departments and newspaper columns at the time.
Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Georgia Tech and other schools quietly built their own quality football programs in the first quarter of the new century, though they never caught the attention of the sport’s ruling class. No Southern team received an invitation to the Rose Bowl, the nation’s only bowl game at the time. But when four schools — Dartmouth, Michigan, Colgate and Princeton — all fell, Alabama launched a charm offensive to try to gain a foothold in the competition.
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The Rose Bowl committee was unmoved. “I’ve never heard of a football team in Alabama,” sniffed one committee member. “I can’t risk mixing lemons and roses.” But with no choice, the committee reluctantly invited Alabama to Pasadena.
(Narration: As you can see, the Rose Bowl has always been like this – so convinced of its own importance, so fiercely protective of its status, status and sunset, that it actively hinders the growth of college football. Remember, the Rose Bowl’s intransigence on start times and games was a key impediment to the growth of the College Football Playoff. Some things never change.)
Alabama won the Rose Bowl thanks to a comeback from a 12-0 halftime deficit and an unprecedented halftime speech from head coach Wallace Wade. (He looked around the frustrated locker room, stared into the players’ faces, and said simply, “They told me the boys from the South would fight.” Alabama eventually won, 20-19.) The entire South welcomed the Tide as conquering heroes on the train back to Tuscaloosa, and Alabama still commemorates the Rose Bowl victory with its fight song. No one would turn their nose up at the South’s ability to play football anymore.
Go forward a century and you can hear the echoes and see the patterns. The Indiana of 2025 isn’t quite the lemon of 1925 Alabama. Today’s Hoosiers embody and embody all the upheavals of the current post-COVID college landscape — the NIL, the transfer portal, bloated conferences that resulted in an incomplete regular season — plus a paranoid coach who has reshaped Indiana’s entire image in just two years.
In the span of two seasons, Curt Cignetti transformed Indiana from the worst losing team in college football history to the No. 1 team in the country and the favorite to win the national championship. (Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images)
(Michael Hickey via Getty Images)
Think about it: Until this season, the Indians’ 714 losses were the worst in Division I history. But an undefeated season would allow other teams to catch up (or fall behind) in the losing ranks, and that’s exactly what has happened; Northwestern now claims the dubious “honor” of the most losing DI program. Indiana is competing for a national championship. That’s how fast long-term narratives change.
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Alabama’s 1926 Rose Bowl victory gave hope to the rest of Southern football in their ongoing struggle for legitimacy in the eyes of a scornful establishment. “Alabama is us against the world,” then-Vanderbilt coach Dan McGugin said in 1926. “I fought, bled, died, and came back to life with the Crimson Tide.” (The quote was much better at the time.)
Likewise, Indiana’s rise — and that of Vanderbilt, Tulane, James Madison and others — has inspired other historically troubled programs. Yes, you need a ton of money to compete, but if you can convince your billionaire alumni to open their wallets, then run the portal properly, and hire a coach who knows what they’re doing, well… the road to the top isn’t as daunting as it once was. Indiana has shown the way.
Over the last century, especially the last 60 years, college football has basically run through the South. Alabama, Georgia, Florida State, Miami, LSU, Florida State, Tennessee, Clemson and Auburn have all won championships and been in the top 10 for a long time, and it all started with the 1926 Rose Bowl.
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Over the next century, however, the sport is likely to take a very different path. Michigan, Ohio State, Texas Tech and Oregon State all have the financial resources to compete every year; the money and portals allow other upstarts to squeeze into the headline conversation. It would be poetic justice if one of the upstarts took Alabama to symbolize the next era of college football.