Caltech hijacks the Rose Bowl card stunt

JAN 02 1961

During the Rose Bowl between Washington and Minnesota, the Washington cheering section's card stunt was rewritten by fourteen Caltech students. Led by 19-year-old Lyn Hardy, who posed as a high-school reporter to learn the plan, they entered the cheerleaders' quarters, reprinted and hand-altered all 2,232 instruction sheets, and swapped them back on New Year's Eve. On the day, a husky turned into a beaver, one word appeared reversed, and the fourteenth image spelled CALTECH in block letters before an estimated 30 million NBC viewers.