on the early days of Notre Dame football, Shake Down the Thunder, uncovered a different explanation for the creation of the series that somewhat contradicts the story. Sperber documents that the series was created primarily for financial and political reasons, and that Rockne's resistance to the series is misstated. During the 1920s, many college institutions, including the Big Ten (then called the Western Conference), sought to combat the commercialism that was steadily increasing in college athletics. Part of the concern over commercialism stemmed from the large money payouts teams would receive by traveling long distances to play in bowl games. Meanwhile, Notre Dame had difficulty scheduling local Western Conference opponents because of a ban placed on member schools from playing them. The Irish were initially forced to seek out opponents nationally to fill its schedule, often traveling far away to do so. After the Irish started winning landmark games against elite teams, such as Georgia Tech and Army, the team started to grow in popularity and could command more money for games it scheduled. Notre Dame garnered interest from the Rose Bowl Committee to have Notre Dame come and play a Pacific Coast Conference (now Pac-12) opponent for the 1924 football season. Coach Rockne and the Notre Dame administration realized how lucrative an annual trip to Los Angeles would be for the football program. Notre Dame's West Coast alumni began lobbying Rockne to bring the team to the Rose Bowl as a season finale every year. The Rose Bowl Committee favored this arrangement (at the time there was no tie in with the Big Ten); however, the Pacific Coast Conference had reservations. Specifically, two members schools, Stanford and California refused to play Notre Dame "on account of [Notre Dame's] low scholastic standards." Since Notre Dame was a Catholic school, its academics were considered inferior at the time. USC's coach, Gus Henderson reached out to Rockne through correspondence stating that "USC would welcome the chance to play Notre Dame New Year's Day in Pasadena." While Rockne favored playing USC, Stanford, which won the Pacific Coast Conference title, had first choice and eventually realized that playing Notre Dame would be lucrative, and the two played in the 1925 Rose Bowl. The series between Notre Dame and USC was created because of the still-existing desire for Notre Dame to travel to Los Angeles to please its alums and earn a large payout, as