Just minutes before kickoff at the 1924 football game between Cal and the University of Southern California, reporters in the press box were handed a stunning announcement. Cal and Stanford would be jointly terminating athletic relations with USC at the end of the season. The Bears then salted the wound by handing the favored Trojans their first loss of the year.
For the Bay Area schools, it was a righteous response to ongoing allegations that the rising football power to their south was bending eligibility rules. Ahead of the Cal game, a flurry of news stories had revealed that one of USC’s stars had been paid $200 by a local high school, reportedly to coach the prep team. It was far from the most egregious violation of college athletics’ code of amateurism, but the canceled check at the heart of the controversy felt like tangible proof of long-harbored suspicions.
USC hit back by canceling its game with Stanford at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum the following Saturday, never mind that 40,000 tickets had already been sold. “If we aren’t good enough to play Stanford next year, we aren’t this year” became the rallying cry.
‘ “If we aren’t good enough to play Stanford next year, we aren’t this year,” became the rallying cry.’
Stanford—which was 5–0 under new coach Pop Warner—scrambled for a replacement. The University of Utah was enticed west, but Stanford Stadium was booked for the Stanford-Cal freshman game. So, for the first and only time, the Cardinal took the field at Cal’s Memorial Stadium as the home side. Attendance was sparse—5,000 compared with the 70,000 expected in L.A.—but the detour benefited Stanford. The Cardinal routed Utah 30–0, while USC was upset by its own hastily arranged substitute, St. Mary’s College of California. Stanford’s first Pacific Coast Conference title was in sight.
It would come down to Big Game. The undefeated Card returned to Berkeley to face undefeated (but once-tied) Cal, national champions four years running. With less than five minutes remaining, Stanford rallied from a 14-point deficit to tie the game and edge the Bears to the title. Stanford would be heading down south after all—to the school’s first Rose Bowl in more than two decades.
Ultimately, cooler heads would prevail with respect to USC. In February 1925, the “Big Three” announced they would resume competition. “[I]t was clear to everyone that the conference could not exist long-term on a competitive and economic basis with some of the member schools refusing to compete against each other,” author Raymond Schmidt wrote in his book Shaping College Football: The Transformation of an American Sport, 1919-1930. Indeed, except in times of war or pandemic, the Stanford-USC rivalry would reignite on the gridiron every fall for the next century. This year—with the virtual dissolution of the Pac-12—marks the first time outside of global crisis that the two sides haven’t met since that surprise plot twist 100 years ago.
Sam Scott is a senior writer at Stanford. Email him at sscott3@stanford.edu.
