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On Jan. 1, 1926, the mighty Washington Huskies strode onto the pristine grass at the Rose Bowl certain they would cap off another dominant season with another Rose Bowl victory. Washington was 10-0-1 on the season, winning by scores of 56-0, 59-0, 64-2, and 108-0 (really). Their opponent was some Southern backwater school which only received the prestigious Rose Bowl invitation after four other blueblood colleges declined. 

But then that backwater school, the University of Alabama, went and won that Rose Bowl, setting off shockwaves throughout college football that reverberate louder than ever today. 

On Jan. 1, 2026, that same Alabama, wearing the same crimson and white as their forefathers, will run onto the still-magnificent Pasadena grass to face a school that, until about 15 months, was the definition of a college football doormat. Granted, Indiana isn’t sneaking up on anybody the way that 1926 Alabama team did — a pristine regular-season record and a No. 1 ranking took care of that — but the Hoosiers’ presence in the Granddaddy of Them All heralds a similar seismic shift in college football. 

Back in the 1920s, the elite-level college football universe comprised the Pacific Coast, the Upper Midwest and the Northeast. Stanford, Michigan, Penn State and the Ivy League. Everywhere south of Ohio and Pennsylvania — well, they played football, sure, but in the same way that kids on a dirt lot play football, with a whole lot of fighting and not much skill. Or so the prevailing wisdom held in the establishment athletic departments and newspaper columns of the day. 

Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Georgia Tech and other schools had quietly built quality football programs of their own in the first quarter of the new century, though they never caught the eye of the sport’s ruling class. No Southern team had received an invitation to the Rose Bowl, then the only bowl game in the country. But when four schools — Dartmouth, Michigan, Colgate and Princeton — all declined, Alabama put on a charm offensive to try to secure a spot in the game. 

The Rose Bowl committee was unimpressed. “I’ve never heard of Alabama as a football team,” one committee member sniffed, “and I can’t take a chance on mixing a lemon with a rose.” But left with no other options, the committee held its nose and invited Alabama to Pasadena. 

(An aside: As you can see, the Rose Bowl has always been this way — so convinced of its own importance and so determined to protect its status, standing and sunset that it’s actively stood in the way of college football’s growth. Remember that the Rose Bowl’s intransigence on starting times and matchups was a key roadblock in the development of the College Football Playoff. Some things never change.) 

Alabama won that Rose Bowl, thanks to a comeback from a 12-0 halftime deficit and an all-timer of a halftime speech from head coach Wallace Wade. (He looked around the downcast locker room, stared into the faces of his players, and said, simply, “And they told me that boys from the South would fight.” Alabama went on to win 20-19.) The entirety of the South welcomed the Tide as conquering heroes on their train ride back to Tuscaloosa, and Alabama commemorates the Rose Bowl win to this day in its fight song. And nobody sniffed at the South’s ability to play football ever again. 

Skip forward a century, and you can hear echoes, view patterns. The Indiana of 2025 isn’t exactly the “lemon” that 1925 Alabama was. The Hoosiers of today personify and embody all the upheavals of the current post-COVID college landscape — NIL, the transfer portal, bloated conferences that render regular seasons incomplete — combined with a monomaniacal coach who has reshaped Indiana’s entire identity in just two years. 

Michael Hickey via Getty Images

Think about this: right up until this season, the Hoosiers’ 714 program losses stood as the worst in Division I history. But an undefeated season allows others to catch up (or down) in the loss column, and that’s precisely what has happened; Northwestern now claims the dubious “honor” of the losingest DI program. And Indiana is in the hunt for a national championship. That’s how fast long-running narratives can change. 

Alabama’s 1926 Rose Bowl win gave hope to the rest of Southern football in their ongoing battle for legitimacy in the eyes of a disdainful establishment. “Alabama was our representative in fighting for us against the world,” then-Vanderbilt coach Dan McGugin said in 1926. “I fought, bled, died and was resurrected with the Crimson Tide.” (Quotes were so much better then.) 

In the same way, Indiana’s ascension — and those of Vanderbilt, Tulane, James Madison and others — has inspired other historically struggling programs. You need truckloads of money to compete, yes, but if you can persuade your billionaire alums to open their wallet, then work the portal properly, and bring in a coach who knows what he’s doing, well … the path to the top isn’t quite as daunting as it once was. Indiana has shown the way. 

Over the last century, and especially the last 60 years, college football has largely run through the South. Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Miami, LSU, Florida State, Tennessee, Clemson and Auburn have all claimed titles and staked out long-term top-10 rankings, and it all began with that 1926 Rose Bowl. 

Over the next century, though, the sport could well take a very different path. Michigan, Ohio State, Texas Tech and Oregon all have the financial resources to compete on an annual basis; money and the portal allow other upstarts to elbow their way into the title conversation. It would be a bit of poetic justice if one of those upstarts took out Alabama to symbolize college football’s next era.