The Rose Bowl annually welcomes us to the new year with a parade, a football game, and a day of festivities and spectacles to celebrate nearly 130 years of tradition. With everything going on it may be difficult to decide what the most memorable moments were, so we have picked a few of our favorites to save you the trouble!

The Award for Worst Parade Float Goes To…

Toward the end of the Rose Parade itself, smoke filled the air, gaps developed between the floats, and the crowd, assuming the event to be over, began to shuffle out. The culprit was a transmission leak which caused fluid to spill onto a hot exhaust pipe on the Chinese Heritage Float, built by repeat offender Fiesta Party Floats, who have been fined numerous times in the past for faulty floats. The fiasco ended with confused spectators and the float limping in later to a notably thin crowd. Better luck in 2020, guys.

The Best Hops on a Referee Go To…

Everybody likes to celebrate the athleticism of the players in sporting events — heck, it’s the whole reason we watch. But everybody forgets that there are a handful of striped shirt wearing fellas and fellettes out there running around, and without as much protective gear. Well, those guys aren’t zebra cosplayers, they’re refs, and they have to keep up with the strapping young lads in their late teens and early twenties. John McDaid in particular stole the show when he leaped, like, 68 feet* in the air to snatch a floating balloon from the stratosphere. Maybe he should go out for basketball next semester.

*probably not the actual height

The Best Retirement Send Off Goes To…

The most important part of the day was, of course, the football game. Coach Urban Meyer has been coaching for Ohio State University since 2012, and his career spans another two decades previous to that. His record with the school includes two championships, and he is only the third coach in history to win championships with two different schools. His legacy has a little patina on it due to his mishandling of personnel issues regarding troublesome players off the field and helping to cover for an assistant coach accused of domestic violence. His genius on the field has been unmatched, however, and he is leaving the Buckeyes in much better condition than he found them.

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