[4] This was Bo Schembechler's final game as Michigan's head coach,[5] and he finished with a 2–8 record in Rose Bowls.
USC lost their opener to Illinois 14–13, but won the rest with the exception of a 28–24 mid-season loss at Notre Dame and a 10–10 tie in their regular season finale with rival UCLA.
It was a third-straight berth in the Rose Bowl for the Trojans, but they had lost the previous two, the only such streak in USC history (through 2025, no Pac-12 team has done so since[citation needed]).
The previous western team to lose consecutively was California, which dropped three straight (1949–1951) while representing the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC).
[2][3][8][9][10] At the end of the game, Schembechler walked off the field as head coach for the last time, refusing interview requests; he remained briefly as the athletic director,[11] a post he gained concurrently in 1988.