1945: USC, 26 vs. Tennessee, 0

It appeared to be a total mismatch from the start. The mighty Trojans against a Tennessee team made up mostly of freshmen. Led by the arm and leg of quarterback Capt. Jim Hardy in his final game, undefeated USC overcame a slow start and demolished the visiting Volunteers in the last Rose Bowl Game played against an at-large team from the East Coast. The following season began the tradition featuring the Pac-10 champion versus the Big Ten champion.

Hardy, nursing a fever that kept him up the previous night, played the entire game, throwing a final 49-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter to Scott MacLachlen that broke all Trojan and Rose Bowl Game records. The touchdown pass, added to the 22-yard TD pass he threw in the second quarter to Paul Salata, gave him five for his career, an all-time mark at the time through the first 31 years of the game.

The touchdowns were also his ninth and 10th of the season, breaking Russ Saunders’ 1929 Trojan mark of nine in a season. Hardy also ran for a 9-yard score and handled the punting duties.

Salata’s score was described as a “beautiful bit of gridiron deception” after the Trojans had worked their way into Tennessee territory at the 22-yard line: “Hardy took the ball and started around his right end on a play that has been peculiar to the Trojans all season. He galloped as though he was headed for the Colorado St. bridge, but all of a sudden he stopped dead still. The Volunteers were chasing him, hell for leather, and were just upon him when he quit running and heaved the ball over his left shoulder in the opposite direction in which the play was headed. Standing over there in the corner of the end zone was Paul Salata, who took the ball all by his lonesome for the second touchdown.”

Hardy had a chance for one more score in the closing minutes of the first half, but his pass to Salata in the end zone was ruled out of bounds.

“The best passer I’ve ever seen,” was the way Tennessee quarterback Capt. Billy Bevis described Hardy.

Tennessee Coach John Barnhill was equally impressed with the play of 245-pound Trojan tackle Johnny Ferraro, who gave Hardy the time to throw all day. “He is truly an All-American,” Barnhill said of Ferraro, who went on to become a longtime Los Angeles City Council president, adding that he would put Hardy in the same All-American category.

The Trojans outplayed the Vols in every facet of the game. They won the total yards battle, 311-170. Tennessee freshman Buster Stephens carried the ball 14 times for 82 yards for the only real bright spot on the day for the visitors.

“All Tennessee needed was a little more experience,” USC coach Jeff Cravath said. He added that in the first half USC “looked worse than I have ever seen us look.”

USC’s first score came courtesy of a blocked Stephens’ punt by sophomore Jim Callanan, who scored his first Trojan touchdown on a 30-yard run “ambling hastily over the goal line with the Stephens man in anguished pursuit.”

From one Southland newspaper account: “It is always nice to say that the defeated team played a valiant but losing game, but in this instance one doesn’t have to riffle through Emily Post’s tome on etiquette to find something nice to say about the visitors.”

Attendance
91,000

Weather
72 degrees

Scoring
First Quarter
USC – J. Callanan, 30-yard run (West kick missed)

Second Quarter
USC – Salata, 22-yard pass from Hardy (West kick missed)

Fourth Quarter
USC – Hardy, 9-yard run (West kick good)
USC – MacLachlan, 49-yard pass from Hardy (West kick missed)

Coaches
USC: Jeff Cravath
Tennessee: John Barnhill

Fun Fact
Jim Hardy set a Rose Bowl Game record by throwing for five touchdown passes and scoring one himself in two consecutive Rose Bowl Games

Individual Stats
Rushing
USC: Burnside 12-116; Whitehead 12-51; Headley 14-47
Tenn: Stephens 14-82; Manning 4-32; Bevis 3-23