the 12th stunt was supposed to spell out “huskies” in script. this normally began with the “h” and proceeded to the final “s”, but, because lloyd house had reversed the numbers on the instruction cards, it spelled huskies backwards – seiksuh.
panic began to set in. the cheerleaders called stunt 14, which, to the horror of the washington rooters, turned out to be a big, bold, block-lettered “caltech”, in black on a yellow background.
viewers at home were treated to a few seconds of dead air.
“people were stunned,” said mel allen, who along with chick hearn, broadcast the game for nbc. more than 30 years later, he still recalled the shock of looking across the immensity of the rose bowl and seeing “caltech”. “i was sort of stunned myself. then i started laughing/ it didn’t last but a few seconds. but a few second on the air is a long time. it caused a lot of laughs. you wondered how they had managed to do it.”
what a caltech junior, watching at lloyd house, remembers most are those few seconds of stunned silence from the broadcast booth, and the incredible luck that the prank worked.
“we had debated calling nbc and tipping them off, just to make sure they had a camera focused right,” he said. there was an element of luck. it happened and, boom-ba! the camera was right there. we could have done the whole thing and not been on national television.”
the 100,000 spectators present, and millions watching across the country, didn’t know what to think – some assumed it was part of the tribute to silence; a nod to tiny, brainy caltech. the band stopped playing and filtered off the field. the cheerleaders didn’t have the nerve to call for the 15th stunt (an american flag that had been left unaltered). caltech was victorious.
it should be pointed out, on the theme of pranks affecting onfield performance, that washington didn’t score again after its halftime show was infiltrated and ruined. it managed to hold onto the lead, however, and beat minnesota 17-7.
after the great rose bowl hoax, the rose bowl became the personal mt. everest of caltech pranksters.