Monday’s Rose Bowl between USC and Penn State cooked up a 52-49 shootout between the Trojans and Nittany Lions, and that added up to more points in one game than the Los Angeles Rams managed to score at home all season.
The 101 points scored by USC and Penn State (with the Trojans coming out on top) were the most scored in a Rose Bowl Game in the long history of the storied bowl game. The game topped the 2012 Rose Bowl between Wisconsin (with Russell Wilson and Montee Ball) and Oregon (coached by Chip Kelly with LaMichael James and De’Anthony Thomas), which ended with the Ducks winning 45-38 (83 combined points).
At the time, Oregon and Wisconsin had clipped the record of 80 combined points previously set in 1991 between Washington and Iowa. USC and Penn State obliterated both. The stakes were a bit higher in the 2005 BCS National Championship Game between USC and Texas, but the Longhorns and Trojans combined for 79 points in the best Rose Bowl of all time.
The NFL may be back in the city of Los Angeles, but it still lags behind the kind of entertainment that can be found at the college level in the Los Angeles area, at least from a point-scoring standpoint. The Los Angeles Rams, in their first season back in LA and playing their home games in the Los Angeles Coliseum until their new digs are ready to go, scored just 89 points in their home games this season. The Rams played seven home games in Los Angeles this season, with one home game being transplanted to London for a week. The funny thing is, even if you include that one home game (against the New York Giants), the Rams still come up shy of the Rose Bowl total, with 99 total points.
It goes without saying the Rams need to improve in many areas of their franchise, including on the offensive side of the football a year after drafting Jared Goff with the top pick to be the franchise quarterback for years to come. But right now, the Rose Bowl remains the best show in town, and next season the USC Trojans could be the top football draw in Los Angeles.
[Reddit]
