March 31, 2022 – The Great Rose Bowl Hoax

We’re almost through our theme week on 5 of the Biggest Pranks in History! Today’s prank is considered the greatest collegiate prank of all time. The Great Rose Bowl Hoax happened in 1961 during halftime of the game that pitted the Washington Huskies against the Minnesota Golden Gophers. The Huskies cheerleaders to the field to lead the audience in a card stunt, with each spectator holding up a flip card to depict various images. However, a group of students from Caltech had altered the cards so that they spelled out “CALTECH” instead of Washington.
The prank was planned by a group of Caltech students known later as the fiendish fourteen. They were led by a 19 year old engineering student named Lyn Hardy, who came up with the idea after feeling like their school was always ignored during the annual Rose Bowl. In order to find out the details behind the Huskies halftime show, Hardy posed as a reporter from a local highschool and interviewed the head cheerleaders. They were very open about all the technical details of the routine, and Hardy realized they could trick the unsuspecting Washington fans by changing each of the 2,232 instruction sheets.
The group from Caltech broke into the Cal State Long Beach dorm rooms where the Washington cheerleaders were staying. They took one of the instruction sheets and had copies made. Then, on New Years Eve, while the cheerleaders were visiting Disney Land, they broke in again, to borrow the master instructions. Back at Caltech, they made a new set of 2,232 cards. They then went back to the cheerleader’s dorm rooms, broke in a third time, and replaced the old stack of cards with their new set.
The stunt went off without a hitch at halftime on January 2, 1961. There were 14 designs total on the cards. The 12th design had been changed from a husky to a beaver (the Caltech mascot) the 13th spelled out “Washington” backwards instead of forwards. and the 14th design spelled out Caltech in big block letters. The crowd went silent before breaking out into laughter.
An estimated 30 million people were watching the Rose Bowl that day. The best part of the hoax? Caltech doesn’t even have a football team. Learn more here.