Want to impress your friends who love college football? Ask them this great trivia question: Who are the four players to win back-to-back Rose Bowl MVP Awards?
Want to impress any Wisconsin sports friends who root for the Badgers? Tell them this fact: Ron Dayne is the only Big Ten player in college football history to win the Rose Bowl MVP Award in consecutive seasons.
Yes, he broke the NCAA career rushing record. Yes, Dayne won the Heisman Memorial Trophy 20 years ago in 1999, the reason why we are revisiting Dayne’s career this weekend at Badgers Wire. Yes, Dayne helped Wisconsin win consecutive Rose Bowl games, in many ways the single most important aspect of his legacy in Madison as a college football player. Yet, amid those towering facts, the realization that he is the only Big Ten player to win back-to-back Rose Bowl MVP Awards might be his most remarkable feat.
Archie Griffin of Ohio State is the only man to win back-to-back Heisman Trophies, and he hails from the Big Ten. Dayne winning the Rose Bowl MVP in the 1999 game against UCLA and the 2000 game against Stanford ranks right up there with Griffin’s achievement.
Woody Hayes’ Ohio State teams and Bo Schembechler’s Michigan teams got a number of chances to play in consecutive Rose Bowls. Michigan’s teams under Gary Moeller (early 1990s) and Lloyd Carr (mid-2000s) made repeat trips to the Rose Bowl. Bret Bielema’s Wisconsin teams strung together Rose Bowl seasons. Even Minnesota made consecutive Rose Bowls in the early 1960s.
It has not been easy for the Big Ten to win the Rose Bowl. However, the best decade for the Big Ten was the 1990s, and Dayne was the best part of the best Big Ten Rose Bowl school that decade. Wisconsin teams won three Rose Bowls during that decade: the 1993, 1998, and 1999 teams all triumphed in the Granddaddy. Michigan (1992 and 1997 seasons) won twice, Penn State (1994 season) won once, and Ohio State (1996 season) won once, but Wisconsin was the Rose Bowl king. In that golden period, Barry Alvarez was the Rose Whisperer (3-0 in Rose Bowl games), and Ron Dayne was the cornerstone player who embodied the Badgers’ brilliance in the Arroyo Seco.
The trivia question answer, by the way: The four back-to-back Rose Bowl MVPs are Dayne, Washington’s Bob Schloredt (1960 and 1961 games), USC’s Charles White (1979 and 1980 games), and Texas’s Vince Young (2005 and 2006 games).
When you stand with Charles White and Vince Young, you know you stand as a giant in college football history. That’s what Wisconsin’s Ron Dayne was, and is, and always will be.