I have some history with Wallace Wade Stadium on the campus of Duke University in Durham, NC. That’s where I last saw the Rolling Stones perform on a rainy night in October 2005…a rockin’ experience for this Rock and Roll REALTOR®.  Built in 1929, the horseshoe-shaped facility is named for the legendary Duke Football coach and can seat nearly 34,000. And while the Stones can pack ‘em in, it was another rainy spectacle, this one in 1942, that eclipsed that rock and roll event in attendance and significance.

The college football season of 1941 had just ended when the gruesome attack on Pearl Harbor occurred on December 7^th.  Fear gripped the country, and travel restrictions were placed on our nation’s entire West Coast. The Duke Blue Devils (then coached by Wallace Wade) and the Oregon State Beavers were slated to play in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, on January 1, 1942, the traditional site for that major college football bowl game since 1902. However, concern about a Japanese attack on California had the U.S. Government prohibiting large public gatherings on the West Coast for the duration of World War II. It appeared that in 1942 the nation’s oldest bowl game would not be played.

In order to avert cancellation, officials at Duke University invited Oregon State to play at their home stadium, then known as Duke Stadium. The Rose Bowl Committee and the Beavers accepted the invitation, and the change in venue meant the game would go on. It was a welcome diversion for a nation at war. 56,000 football fans, many sitting on temporary bleachers borrowed from the neighboring University of North Carolina and NC State University, watched the favored Blue Devils lose to Oregon State 20-16.

The Rose Bowl returned to Pasadena in 1943 and subsequent years, making the 1942 game in Durham the only time the Rose Bowl was ever played outside of Pasadena. This year, the Rose Bowl will be played on January 2, 2012, and will feature the Wisconsin Badgers and another team from Oregon, the University of Oregon Ducks. Sadly, the Duke Blue Devils never appeared in another Rose Bowl game, proving the old adage, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

By Tom Gongaware (General Sales Manager, Triangle Region)