War News Overshadowed Huge Victory by USC

On an afternoon when about 50,000 Coliseum spectators heard sobering war news from Europe, a USC football team that would continue on to a Rose Bowl championship registered one of its most impressive victories.

USC had tied Oregon, 7-7, in the season opener and played a scoreless tie with UCLA to end its regular season. In between, the Trojans won seven in a row, including 20-12 at Notre Dame.

But 60 years ago today, they approached perfection in a rousing 33-0 win over Stanford, on a day when all their mainstays--Grenville Lansdell, Doyle Nave, Bob Peoples, Harry Smith and Bob Robertson--dominated Stanford, handing the Indians their biggest margin of defeat in the series’ 21-game history.

One Times writer, Dick Hyland, wrote that the only reason the score wasn’t 75-0 was because “the Trojans didn’t want it that way.”

At halftime, Bill Henry, The Times’ former sports editor then based in Europe, spoke to the crowd over a telephone hookup from France. It was six weeks after Germany’s invasion of Poland and his report left the Coliseum crowd with a sense of foreboding.

When the game ended, Stanford Coach Tiny Thornhill confessed his team had been outclassed.

“The Trojans had too much manpower for us,” he said.

“It was just a case of there being too many of them that were too fast and too good.”

On Jan. 1, 1940, USC beat Tennessee in the Rose Bowl, 14-0, ending the Volunteers’ 23-game winning streak. Before that game, Tennessee had outscored its opponents that season, 212-0.