53 January 1st's ago, the Wisconsin Badgers came possibly within a twist of a punt blocker's body of winning its first ever national championship.
53 years later, they and the team which beat them that day go to battle in a bowl game for the second time.
The Holiday Bowl will bring Wisconsin and the USC Trojans together on Wednesday, Dec. 30.
Wisconsin comes in 9-3, 3rd place in the Big Ten West, in the first year for head coach Paul Chryst.
USC enters 8-5. They won the Pac 12 South division, but fell to Stanford in Saturday night's conference championship game.
Memories of a Rose Bowl for the ages
It's the first time the teams have met in a bowl game since the 1963 Rose Bowl, when the two teams met for college football's biggest prize and played a game that perhaps was the best college football bowl game ever played.
"USC was ranked No. 1 and we were ranked No. 2, so maybe that was the beginning of the BCS thing, I think," said former Badgers and Packers center Ken Bowman, who was part of the first-ever 1 vs. 2 bowl game that day.
USC dominated the game's first 45 minutes, opening up a 42-14 lead.
"In the 4th quarter, you look at the scoreboard, and if you're not embarrassed by that score...you're not an athlete. I think I started feeling that in the huddle, where everybody would say 'Let's do something,' " Badgers quarterback Ron Vander Kelen.
With the sun setting over a Rose Bowl stadium that had few lights, Vander Kelen did something. Big.
He directed the Badgers to a comeback for the ages, leading touchdown drives which put up 21 of the game's next 23 points. Vander Kelen set a (then) Rose Bowl record with 401 yards passing on 33 completions in 48 attempts.
Trailing 42-37, Wisconsin nearly produced the walk-off miracle score for the ages on the game's final play. USC was punting on 4th down when.
"I remember rushing the punter," recounted former Badgers tight end and, eventually, athletic director Pat Richter. "I could see the leg of the punter was going into the body of (Badgers teammate) Elmars Ezerins. I thought, 'My God, he's going to block it.' "
"Elmars turned kind of slightly. The ball went right by his hip...had he blocked that punt, conceivably, he could have walked it in and we would have won that game,"
And pulled off a comeback (from 28 points down) and walk-off touchdown that would have even surpassed the heroics of Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers on Thursday night.
"That is a game where, I think if the game had been two minutes longer, we'd have ended up No. 1 and they'd have ended up No. 2," said Bowman.
