We have written a lot at Trojans Wire about the 1980 Rose Bowl between USC and Ohio State. It is one of the great games in USC football history. It featured one of the greatest drives in USC football history. It was the centerpiece game for one of the greatest football players USC has ever produced.
It also has a great backstory, as we noted earlier this year:
“When you listen to Anthony Munoz talk about the 1980 NFL draft with Tim Prangley and Rick Anaya on Trojan Conquest Live, you can tell he wasn’t absolutely convinced he was going to be a top-five pick or even a first-round pick. The injuries were a concern. Munoz was intent on doing whatever he could to prove to an NFL team that he could contribute. That’s not how a top-five pick would think about his place on the draft board. He really didn’t know what was about to happen at that draft.
“Why did Munoz go at No. 3 in that draft, despite his injury-marred run at USC? It’s very simple: Paul Brown, who won a national championship as the head coach at Ohio State nearly four decades earlier, was at the 1980 Rose Bowl in which Munoz and USC played against the top-ranked Buckeyes.”
The 1980 Rose Bowl capped an unbeaten season at USC. The Trojans weren’t perfect, but no one beat them. They finished No. 2 in the polls, marking the third time in four seasons they were a top-two team in the nation.
Relive the 1979 USC season as part of our Pac-12 football goodbye tour: