The 1931 college football season saw the USC Trojans win the Knute Rockne Memorial Trophy as national champion under the Dickinson System, as well as the No.
[1] Rockne, who had coached Notre Dame to a championship in 1930, had been killed in a plane crash on March 31, 1931.
The 1932 Rose Bowl, promoted as a national championship game between the best teams of East and West,[2] matched USC and Tulane, No.
[3] Davis’ work has been criticized for having a heavy Eastern bias, with little regard for the South and the West Coast.
Purdue opened its season for the home crowd with a doubleheader, beating Ohio's Western Reserve 28–0, followed by a 19–0 win over Iowa's Coe College [6] Pittsburgh won at Iowa, 20–0 Georgia beat Virginia Tech 40–0 Harvard defeated Bates College, 28–0 and Yale beat Maine, 19–0 Notre Dame won at Indiana 25–0 October 10 In Chicago, a crowd of 75,000 turned out at Soldier Field to watch Northwestern and Notre Dame played to a 0–0 tie in a driving rain.
Harvard beat visiting Texas, 35–7 and Yale and Army played to a 6–6 tie, while in Pittsburgh, Purdue defeated Carnegie Tech 13–6.
Before a crowd of 65,000 at Yankee Stadium, Georgia stayed unbeaten as it defeated New York University 7–6, with the aid of a 97–yard kickoff return by Buster Mott in the third quarter.
St. Mary's suffered its first defeat, to the visiting Olympic Club, 10–0 November 11 In an Armistice Day game at Los Angeles, UCLA handed St. Mary's its second straight loss, 12–0 November 14 Tulane (7–0–0) and Georgia (6–0–0) faced off in Athens before a crowd of 36,000 for the rights to best in the South.
A crowd of 52,000 turned out as (5–1–0) USC came to the Notre Dame campus in South Bend for the first time ever.
In the final minute, Baker kicked a 34–yard field goal for a 16–14 win, Notre Dame's first loss in 27 starts.
Yale (3–1–2) hosted Harvard (7–0–0) and won 3–0 November 26 On Thanksgiving Day, Pitt and Nebraska, both 7–1–0, met in Pittsburgh, with the home team winning 40–0.
November 28 In Yankee Stadium, a crowd of 80,000 turned out in spite of a snowstorm, and watched as Notre Dame was beaten by Army, 12–0, for its second consecutive defeat after 26 games without a loss.
Tulane defeated LSU 34–7 and Georgia defeated Georgia Tech 35–6 December 5 Tulane beat Washington State 28–14 to close at 11–0–0, unbeaten and untied, while Tennessee played NYU at Yankee Stadium, winning 13–0 to finish at 8–0–1.
December 12 USC and Georgia, both 8–1–0, met in Los Angeles, and the visiting Bulldogs were crushed 60–0 For the first time, the Rose Bowl matchup included the No.
In the third quarter, Erny Pinckert ran 28 yards for a touchdown, then, after the Trojans recovered a Tulane fumble, scored again.
USC went up 21–0 before Tulane fought back with two touchdowns, and only a tough Trojan defense held the Green Wave from scoring more.
[14] Although Tulane was unbeaten and untied (11–0), they were second to 9–1 USC in the final Dickinson System mathematical ratings.
The Trojans requested that presentation of the Knute Rockne Memorial Trophy be delayed until after the game.
[16] During the delay, it was decided that the Dickinson System trophy would go to the winner of the Rose Bowl game.