Despite rumors to the contrary, Keith Jackson didn’t invent the Rose Bowl.
He was born in the fall of 1928, a few months before California’s Roy Riegels acquired the lifelong nickname “Wrong Way” by returning a Georgia Tech fumble to the edge of the Bears’ end zone, where their quick-kick punt out of trouble was blocked for a safety. By the time Jackson was old enough to speak — I suspect his first word was “Whoa,” and the second was “Nellie” — the Rose Bowl was entrenched in American sports lore.
But until Jackson described college football’s original bowl game in that rural Georgia twang of his, it was not known as “The Granddaddy Of Them All.