1924 Christmas Festival
12/2/2013 12:00:00 AM | Football
Dec. 2, 2013
L.A. Coliseum -- Los Angeles, Calif.
Missouri's first football team to play in a bowl game, the 1924 squad which lost to USC, 20-7 in the Christmas Festival, would not have even played in that bowl game were it not for an enormous stroke of luck.
Southern California and Stanford had tied for the Pacific Coast Conference title and the right to play Notre Dame in the Rose Bowl. The Rose Bowl took Stanford, and USC seemed to be left out of the bowl picture.
Instead, the city of Los Angeles chose to honor the Trojans in a Christmas Day game, called the Christmas Festival. The best remaining team in the nation was to be chosen as USC's opponent. Missouri, the Missouri Valley champion with a loss to Nebraska its only setback in eight games, was chosen to play in the game.
While the selection was an honor, Mizzou had expected to be spending the holiday at home and had not held practice in nearly two weeks when the Tigers headed to California. Perhaps this should have served as a warning to the Tigers.
Despite the layoff, Mizzou performed well early particularly on defense, and found itself in a scoreless deadlock at halftime. An unexpected delay at halftime apparently got the Tigers off track though, as Southern Cal engineered three long scoring drives against the Tiger defense. The Trojans ran away with a 20-7 victory in MU's first bowl appearance.
