Not many teams outside the Pac-10 and Big Ten consider the Rose Bowl as hallowed ground.


But the Alabama Crimson Tide do. Fans, players, and coaches alike see this as something special.


The Rose Bowl Stadium spawned the legends that made the Crimson Tide one of the premier programs in all of football. They were the redneck upstarts that were brought in to show the world that southern teams did not deserve to play with the "elite" teams of the time.


Then, after consistently beating them, they were banned forever. But forever didn't prove to be all that long thanks to the rotating bowls used for the BCS.


Now Alabama has a chance to make some new memories that can finally be recorded in color film and to reclaim the Rose Bowl Stadium once again as its "Home stadium West."


To recap the history of the Rose Bowl and Alabama's history in it, you must start at the beginning.


The first game was in 1902 and few know it was originally called the “Tournament East-West Football Game." It was to match a top team from the east with a western power.


That first game was so bad that it almost killed the whole idea of ever hosting another football game.


Michigan came to play Stanford and was beating them so severely that Stanford quit in the third quarter after being pummeled 49-0. For the next 15 years, that famous New Year’s Day celebration featured ostrich races, chariot races, and anything other than football.


But on Jan. 1, 1916 not only did football come back to stay, but western pride was healed when the State College of Washington beat Brown 14-0.


For nine years this was an east-west contest. A committee was formed to invite on the best of the best.


Southern football was looked upon by the rest of the nation as “Hillbilly Ball” and far inferior to the great teams of the north and the powerhouses of the west. And as a result the south was always snubbed from the Rose Bowl, kept away from the “Biggest and Best."


But southern sports writers kept up the heat, telling how southern teams could take on the best the rest of the nation had to offer. Shameless writers did everything but call the Rose Bowl committee cowards for their reluctance to schedule a southern power.


Following the 1925 Rose Bowl, the committee sought out a southern team that was good enough to match up with a "real" national power and set their sights on Alabama.


The 1925 Alabama team was led by coach Wallace Wade and was undefeated, yet outside the south, few thought these country boys had a chance against a "real" team like Washington.


The first half certainly cemented that belief as Washington jumped out to 12-0 lead and seemed to have the game under control, but a rousing halftime talk by Wade changed the mood and momentum of the game and the Tide came out and scored 20 unanswered points until Washington came back with six of their own.


That 20-19 Alabama win did little to change the skeptics' minds and many felt it was just a lucky win, but in the south, it was the game that changed football forever. For the first time, not only was a southern school invited, but they also won, and they won the national championship as well.