PASADENA, Calif. — A collection of friends from Minnesota tailgated outside the Rose Bowl Stadium on sunny Saturday afternoon and reminisced about times they got hopes up that the Gophers could someday make it back to the Rose Bowl Game.

“They ran billboards with Smokey Joe,” Ken Haggerty, of Cannon Falls, recalled when he was a U student in the early 1980s and Joe Salem was head coach.

Indeed, old Twin City Federal bank had advertisements picturing Salem, with the stem of a rose between his teeth and the slogan: “Let’s go, Smokey Joe!”

Alas, Salem’s run ended with a 19-35-1 record, one winning season and, of course, zero appearances in the Rose Bowl over five seasons.

Haggerty was among 10 Gophers fans — mostly from the east Twin Cities metro area — going down memory lane now that the Gophers are back at the Rose Bowl Stadium for the first time since its last Rose Bowl Game appearance in 1962.

Minnesota plays UCLA in a Big Ten Conference game at the venerated old stadium on Saturday night; more than 10,000 Gophers fans are expected to be in attendance.

From Lot K on the west side of the stadium, Haggerty and friends shared how they started going to one Gophers road game each fall. The Rose Bowl was always on their bucket list when they started the tradition with the U upset No. 6 Ohio State 29-17 in Columbus in 2000.

Multiple people in the friend group brought up that game when chatting with the Pioneer Press. “We have to celebrate the wins — there aren’t a lot of them,” said Tom Potter of Stillwater.

Gary Anderson of Eagan brought up another Ohio State game, when Salem’s first team “put a hell of a scare” into the No. 15 Buckeyes in an eventual 21-17 loss in 1979.

“So, Joe’s the guy,” Anderson said. “Turns out Joe wasn’t the guy.”

Then the buddies ticked through the other coaches who ended up not being ‘the guy’ — including Lou Holtz, John Gutekunst, Jim Wacker, Glen Mason, Tim Brewster, Jerry Kill and, so far, P.J. Fleck. In Fleck’s case, it’s in the traditional sense of yet making the actual bowl game.

That doesn’t stop this group from supporting the Gophers. They are already planning their next trip: Eugene, Oregon, when the Gophers play the Ducks next fall.

Closer to the Rose Bowl Stadium, Tris Wykes and son Easton wore vintage-looking “Golden Gophers CHAMPS 1962” shirts to commemorate the 21-3 win over the Bruins.

Tris was a student manager for the Gophers football team from 1989-93 and flew to California from the family home in Lebanon, N.H., His son Easton Wykes is a current team manager, and came out on his own from Minneapolis.

“I always swore that if the Gophers got to the Rose Bowl, I would be there,” Tris Wykes said. “This isn’t quite what I had in mind, them playing UCLA in a conference game. But it is still the Rose Bowl. It’s still the Gophers being here.”

Gophers fans didn’t just descend on Pasadena on Saturday. A handful of fans were 50 miles to the southwest on Friday night in Laguna Beach to watch senior quarterback Jackson Pollock. The commit to the U’s 2025 recruiting class threw three touchdown passes before exiting in the Breakers’ blowout win.

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