Memories of Purdue football's Rose Bowl trip stand out 25 years later
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Editor’s note: This story is the seventh in a series related to Purdue’s 2000 football season.
Thirty-four years had passed since Purdue football‘s 14-13 victory over USC on Jan. 2, 1967.
Boilermaker fans who opted not to travel west for that game in anticipation of attending Purdue in future Rose Bowls knew not to make the same mistake ahead of the Jan. 1, 2001 game against Washington.
That, and generations of new Purdue fans since Jack Mollenkopf’s team won in the program’s only previous Rose Bowl appearance, meant Pasadena was packed with plenty of old gold and black during the holiday season.
Ben Smith, safety: “Purdue has great fans. All they want is to see a little success. There were so many people who went to that Rose Bowl. There’s so many Purdue people all over the country who wanted to go to the Rose Bowl and we were able to give it to them.”
Times have changed since 2000, but the Rose Bowl, coined the “Grandaddy of Them All” by legendary sportscaster Keith Jackson, was the marquee event of bowl season.
Pete Lougheed, tight end: “Growing up, the Rose Bowl was the pinnacle of college football for me. And growing up in Indiana, Big Ten football was always the conference I paid the most attention to. So being able to get to the Rose Bowl was just amazing. A great dream come true growing up in the Midwest.”
Ashante Woodyard, cornerback: “Playing in the Rose Bowl is something everybody dreamed of. If you get the opportunity to play in the Rose Bowl, as a kid you see it on TV, it’s like a dream. You actually get there and it’s like, man, I get to play in the Rose Bowl. That’s a big stage.”
Craig Terrill, defensive tackle: “It was a lot for a kid like me from Lebanon (Indiana) to be in Los Angeles and see stuff like that for the first time.”
For a bunch of guys in their late teens and early 20s who spent the school year in West Lafayette, Los Angeles in December was a luxury away from the Indiana winter.
And it offered experiences beyond football.
Scott Kurz, punter: “One thing that definitely sticks out, we went to the Jay Leno show and they had a warm-up comedian for Leno that came out and started pumping the crowd up. He was kind of their hype guy. He was making football jokes, but he kept taking digs at punters. So he finally said let’s get Purdue’s punter up here. They had me come up on stage. I don’t remember exactly what happened but they played some music and we all had to do some dances with it. There was cheerleaders or whoever dancing on stage. I’ll never forget that moment in front of a studio audience. It was never on air, but that’s something unlike I’ve ever been a part of.”
As guests of The Tonight Show, Purdue players got to meet Leno, as well as Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton. Some remember the Price Is Right or Disneyland or various other non-football activities, including the first taste of fast food on the west coast.
Shaun Phillips, defensive end: “The thing I remember the most was how excited we were to eat an In-N-n Out burger. We’d never had In-N-Out.”
Phillips wasn’t the only player who left impressed, but when it came to dining, the most memorable is the Lawry’s Beef Bowl, an annual prime rib eating competition between the Rose Bowl’s participating teams. It’s a memory that still doesn’t sit well with some, given some Purdue players believe the contest was fixed.
Josh Kirkpatrick, offensive lineman: “That was the the most I’ve ever eaten in my life, to be honest. They cut me off after four of the 18 ouncers. I can’t remember who ate five. It might’ve been Max Miller. All the O-linemen were sitting at that table. Combined, we ate about 40 pounds of meat that night. It was an atrociously high number.”
Tim Upshur, safety: “I think we ate the significance of a full cow between the two teams.”
Kelly Kitchel, offensive lineman: “They told us it was a competition. Here we go. We’re from the Midwest. Prime rib in front of us, we’re going to go. I think Max Miller put down about 10 prime ribs. I didn’t get that many but I was pretty full coming out of there. We ate them out of prime rib that night. They said we can order no more. Then they said Washington ate more. You cut us off. I would’ve eaten myself ’til I couldn’t even move to win a competition.”
Jacob Rowe, fullback: “They said Washington out ate the Boilermakers. Hey, wait a second. We were asking for more and you said you were out. We came into that thing and the Rose queens are sitting at your table talking to you. They are of course beautiful girls and you have a bunch of meat head college kids who are like I am eating all the steak I can eat.”
But there was a game to be played and the moment was lost on no one.
Purdue practiced in the LA Memorial Coliseum.
Jim Lathrop, strength coach: “Everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve always wanted to take the weight room with me. We were there for 10 days. You’re trying to develop a training program, so you want to make sure that’s emphasized.”
The downside? Lathrop had to drag five platforms, power racks and benches to the field, setting up a makeshift weight room facility inside tents along the field.
As 2000 turned to 2001, anticipation was at an all-time high for Purdue players living out a vision coach Joe Tiller put in their heads two seasons earlier.
Travis Dorsch, kicker: “But there is nothing better than waking up in the hotel the day of the game. You hear the parade. You get on the bus and have multiple CHiPs motorcycles escorting you to the stadium.”
For those who saw the Rose Bowl that day after the 1998 season opener at USC, this far trumped what they remembered.
Chris Clopton, cornerback: “We get off the bus and coach Tiller didn’t want the small guys getting off the bus first. We made sure we were going to be the first ones on that game field when we came out. It was me, Vinny Sutherland, Donald Winston, all the short guys were the first ones to run out in the stadium.”
Brady Doe, safety: “You walk on that field and it’s just history.”
Warren ‘Ike’ Moore, defensive end: “The thing that I tell people when they’ve seen it on TV and never have been there before, the colors of the teams painted on the field are so vivid. When you walk out and see it, and then you see San Gabriel Mountains in the background, the view was just unbelievable.”
Dorsch: “As a kicker, I’m like a golfer. I am always interested in the grass. Walking out on that field that is manicured like a putting green coming from our 3½ inch bluegrass at Ross-Ade Stadium at the time to that beautiful Bermuda field was awesome.”
Montrell Lowe, running back: “As a kid when you’re watching the Rose Bowl from home and the parade and everything that went along with it, the Grandaddy of Them All and hearing that all the time. Even as a kid in Texas, you watched the Rose Bowl. No matter what happened with the Cotton Bowl, the Rose Bowl was the Grandaddy of Them All. To be able to walk through that stadium and all the successful people who have graced and laced that field, and you’re a part of that forever. In the moment, it meant a lot. As a football player, to walk through that tunnel and stand on that field and be a part of all the legendary people who played on that field, that’s what you go to college for. That’s what you play for.”
Chukky Okobi, center: “This is my last chance to prove I can play at the next level. It’s the Grandaddy of ‘Em All. The peripheral stuff, the getting there and the Jay Leno show and the parade, all that stuff was great memories. The thing to me was how it was connected to everything that we had been through, especially those guys that were seniors and wanted to make this last time working together and playing together count.”
AT Simpson, receiver: “I haven’t walked on the clouds of heaven yet, but boy, I felt really close then, because it was just like a magical place. Man, I’m really stepping on the field. And it’s just like everybody says. You start the game when the sun is shining and nothing beats the Rose Bowl sunset. It just kind of disappears.”
As for the game, errors that put Purdue in early season holes against Notre Dame and Penn State returned. On the first play, Drew Brees rolled right and slipped for a loss of 7 yards, setting up a three-and-out. Vinny Sutherland was flagged on the punt for interfering with the catch. Tim Stratton’s punt snap on Purdue’s second series sailed over Kurz’s head.
Kurz: “I will always think about that until the day I die. I tipped it and ran back and got it and my plan was to pick it up. As I was turning I was able to pick it up and my plan was to do a sidewinder kick down the field similar to what I had done in the Michigan State game. My cleat gave out and the turf gave out. That was a huge momentum change. Washington got the ball deep in our territory. We were unable to dig out of that hole.”
Those two early miscues put Purdue in a 14-0 hole. After settling down, the Boilermakers outscored Washington 24-20 over the final three quarters, but the early damage proved costly in a 34-24 loss.
Ian Allen, guard: “That was not a tough game. It was not. We just got behind.”
Ken Greene, defensive backs coach: “As a player at Washington State, I never went to the Rose Bowl. At that time, it was the hallmark of college football. It was the bowl. The only bad part about it was we went against the Huskies and they beat us. Competitively, as far as talent, it was two closely matched teams. If we played three times, I think we could have won two or they could have won two. It was a very closely matched game and they were the better team that day.”
Vinny Sutherland, receiver: “Purdue has the best fans. They just deserve a big one. It broke my heart that we couldn’t get that Rose Bowl win.”
Drew Brees, quarterback (from a Journal & Courier interview in 2015): “There’s nothing I wish more than for every football player that puts on a Purdue uniform than to be able to experience what we experienced that year. That unbelievable feeling of togetherness and accomplishment.”
Five offensive starters from Purdue’s Big Ten championship team would be selected in the 2001 NFL Draft, a recurring theme over the next three years for members of that roster, and beyond for those who followed.
After coming up just short while also finally breaking through, Purdue was no longer satisfied getting to the Rose Bowl. The Boilermakers vowed to return. And win.
Niko Koutouvides, linebacker: “I’ve played in two Super Bowls and I lost both of them. You return the next year and you say, look, we can get back. And it’s so damn hard.”
Sam King covers sports for the Journal & Courier. Email him at sking@jconline.com and follow him on X and Instagram @samueltking.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Looking back at Purdue football’s 2001 Rose Bowl appearance
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