Rose Bowl Trivia
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58 free Rose Bowl trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Rose Bowl is the oldest bowl game in college football, the stadium that hosted five Super Bowls and both a men's and a women's World Cup final, and the New Year's Day parade that all of it was invented to pay for. This Rose Bowl trivia quiz covers every side of it: the 1902 game so lopsided that Pasadena switched to chariot and ostrich races for thirteen years, the wartime year the game moved to North Carolina, the Big Ten versus Pac-8/10/12 tradition, the BCS and Playoff eras, and the parade's floats, grand marshals and B-2 flyover. The questions run from easy ones any college football fan can get (which city, which nickname, which broadcaster coined it) to expert-level records, sponsors and stadium history. It works for a New Year's Day watch party, a tailgate or a college football trivia night. Every answer was checked against the Tournament of Roses record and Wikipedia's game-by-game history before publishing, and each question carries a citation to the page it came from.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city is the Rose Bowl Game traditionally played?
Pasadena
Pasadena staged its first New Year's festival in 1890 to show snowbound Easterners that flowers bloomed there in midwinter. The football game was added 12 years later.
Q 02Which broadcaster is credited with nicknaming the Rose Bowl "The Granddaddy of Them All"?
Keith Jackson
Keith Jackson, ABC's voice of college football for decades, called his final game at the 2006 Rose Bowl. The stadium has since put up a statue of him outside its gates.
Q 03Which school's fight song still says "Remember the Rose Bowl" after its 20–19 upset there in 1926?
Alabama
Alabama trailed 12–0 at halftime, then scored all 20 of its points in the third quarter to stun the heavily favored Huskies. A student contest for a fight song followed, and "Yea Alabama" won it.
Q 04After the 1902 blowout, what replaced football at the Tournament of Roses for 13 years?
Chariot and ostrich races
Chariot and ostrich races filled New Year's Day until football came back in 1916. The chariot races were Roman-style, inspired by the novel Ben-Hur.
Q 05Which Pacific Northwest school beat Brown 14–0 in the 1916 Rose Bowl, when football returned for good?
Washington State
Washington State won on a field that days of rain had turned to deep mud. Neither side scored before halftime, and both of its touchdowns came on the ground afterwards.
Q 06Why was a football game added to the New Year's festivities in 1902?
To help pay for the Rose Parade
To help pay for the Rose Parade, organisers wanted an event they could sell tickets to. Thousands came, but the game was so one-sided that they dropped football after a single try.
Q 07Along which boulevard does the Rose Parade travel for most of its route?
Colorado Boulevard
Colorado Boulevard is the host city's main street, and it fills up the night before: many spectators sleep out on its sidewalks to hold a free spot for the morning.
Q 08Where were the first eight Rose Bowl games played, before the stadium was built?
Tournament Park
Tournament Park lost the game because it drew too well: in 1920 city officials declared its wooden stands unsafe for the growing New Year's crowds, and the Rose Bowl was built to replace it.
Q 09The Rose Bowl stadium's design was modeled on the football bowl of which university?
Yale
Yale's bowl, opened in 1914, gave the stadium its shape and its name. The word then spread from this one game to every postseason "bowl game" and, in time, to the Super Bowl.
Q 10Because of fears of a Japanese attack after Pearl Harbor, the 1942 Rose Bowl was played in which state?
North Carolina
North Carolina got the game after the government barred large crowds on the West Coast. Duke played host in its own stadium in Durham and still lost, 20–16, to Oregon State.
Q 11Where was the 2021 Rose Bowl played after COVID-19 forced its relocation?
AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas
AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, home of the Dallas Cowboys, took the game after state officials would not allow even players' families to attend; it was only the second time the game had left its home.
Q 12From 1947 to 2023, the Rose Bowl traditionally matched the Big Ten champion against which conference's champion?
Pac-12
Pac-12 champions, under the league's earlier names, met the Big Ten's under a pact signed in 1946. It ended when ten Pac-12 schools left in 2024, four of them for the Big Ten itself.
Q 13Which band's 2009 Rose Bowl concert was streamed live around the world on YouTube?
Q 21Georgia's 54–48 win in the 2018 Rose Bowl semifinal was the first Rose Bowl decided how?
In overtime
In overtime, and it took two periods: Georgia blocked a field-goal try in the second, then Sony Michel ran 27 yards for the touchdown that ended the 54–48 semifinal.
Q 22Which two players are the only ones to have started in four Rose Bowl games?
Archie Griffin and Brian Cushing
Archie Griffin and Brian Cushing each started four in a row, for Ohio State (1973–76) and USC (2006–09). Griffin, the only two-time Heisman winner, won just one of his four.
Q 23Which is the most frequent Rose Bowl matchup, played for the eighth time in 2007?
USC vs Michigan
U2
U2 let fans in 16 countries watch the show on YouTube as it happened, with a replay posted the next day. The band then released the night as a film, U2 360° at the Rose Bowl.
Q 14Which two teams met in the 2002 Rose Bowl, the first BCS title game there?
Miami and Nebraska
Miami and Nebraska met, and the Hurricanes won 37–14. Nebraska got in without even playing for its conference title, while Oregon, No. 2 in the AP poll, was left out.
Q 15The 2006 Rose Bowl drew the biggest college football TV audience since which 1987 bowl game?
Fiesta
The 1987 Fiesta Bowl, a No. 1-versus-No. 2 title showdown, was the last college game with a bigger audience: 35.6 million watched Texas end USC's 34-game winning streak in the 2006 Rose Bowl.
Q 16Which Texas quarterback was named Rose Bowl Player of the Game in both 2005 and 2006?
Vince Young
Vince Young took the award in consecutive years, then in the 2006 game ran for 200 yards and three touchdowns, including the winner with 19 seconds left, against USC.
Q 17Which unbeaten team from outside the major conferences beat Wisconsin 21–19 in the 2011 Rose Bowl?
TCU
TCU, 12–0 out of the Mountain West, got in under a BCS rule: with Oregon off to the title game, the Rose Bowl had to take the highest-ranked team from outside the major conferences.
Q 18Which two teams met in the 100th Rose Bowl Game on January 1, 2014?
Michigan State and Stanford
Michigan State and Stanford met in the 100th game, and the Spartans won 24–20. They sealed it by stopping a fourth-and-one run in Stanford territory with under two minutes left.
Q 19Whose 29-game winning streak did Oregon end in the 2015 Rose Bowl, the first Playoff semifinal?
Florida State
Florida State, the defending champion, came apart after halftime: Jameis Winston slipped as he tried to throw, and Oregon ran his fumble back 58 yards on the way to a 59–20 rout.
Q 20Which team lost the 2017 Rose Bowl 52–49 to USC, setting the record for most points by a losing side?
Penn State
Penn State led 49–35 going into the fourth quarter, then USC scored the last 17 points and won 52–49 on Matt Boermeester's field goal as time expired.
USC vs Michigan has been played eight times, and USC has won six. Michigan took the first by 49–0 in 1948, then lost six of the next seven.
Q 24Which two Big Ten members had never appeared in a Rose Bowl through the 2024 season?
Maryland and Rutgers
Maryland and Rutgers had never made the trip. Rutgers played in the very first college football game, in 1869, yet had still not reached the sport's oldest bowl.
Q 25Which network televised the Rose Bowl every year from 1952 to 1988?
NBC
NBC showed the game for 37 straight New Years, from 1952 to 1988. Then the Rose Bowl jilted it, as one headline put it, for ABC and a contract reported at $100 million.
Q 26The 1962 Rose Bowl marked what broadcasting milestone for college football?
First coast-to-coast color telecast
First coast-to-coast color telecast of a college football game, to be exact. The parade had beaten the game to it: its 1954 broadcast was the first national program shown in color.
Q 27Which Major League Soccer club played its home games at the Rose Bowl from 1996 to 2002?
LA Galaxy
LA Galaxy spent its first seven seasons in a stadium that held more than 90,000. In 2003 it left for a 27,000-seat ground in Carson built for soccer.
Q 28Which company, already the Orange Bowl's title sponsor, became the Rose Bowl's presenting sponsor for 2021?
Capital One
Capital One's first Rose Bowl had to be moved out of state because of the pandemic. For its second, in 2022, the game carried the name of its Venture X card.
Q 29Which sight is a celebrated part of the Rose Bowl's traditional mid-afternoon kickoff?
The sun setting on the San Gabriel Mountains
The sun setting on the San Gabriel Mountains lights the second half of a mid-afternoon kickoff. The game guarded that time slot so closely that playoff schedules were built around it.
Q 30Who traditionally takes part in the Rose Bowl coin toss?
The parade's grand marshal
The parade's grand marshal, chosen by the Tournament's president, also joins the coin toss. In 2015 the honour stayed with Louis Zamperini, who had died months earlier, and his children stood in.