The 1918 Rose Bowl, known at the time as the Tournament East-West Football Game, was a bowl game played on January 1, 1918, at Tournament Park in Pasadena, California.
With America at war, the game was played with players from the Mare Island Marines of California and the Camp Lewis Army from American Lake, Washington.
[1] Since the Rose Bowl game became so popular and most of the college football players were fighting overseas during World War I, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses decided to stage the game with military units, with the approval from President Woodrow Wilson.
John Beckett, left tackle for Mare Island, acknowledged this fact and said that “this would be the last battle that we would fight in the name of sports."
Hugo Bezdek was the coach to lead two separate schools (Oregon in 1917 and Mare Island in 1918) to victories.