Vic Bottari was an
American footballAmerican football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
player. Bottari, nicknamed "Vallejo Vic" attended the
University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
and starred as a halfback, leading the
Golden BearsThe California Golden Bears football team is the college football team of the University of California. The team plays its home games at California Memorial Stadium, however the team played at San Francisco's AT&T Park in 2011 while Memorial Stadium was being renovated, the team will return to...
to a win in the
1938 Rose BowlThe 1938 Rose Bowl was played on January 1, 1938, and was the 24th Rose Bowl. The game featured the California Golden Bears against the Alabama Crimson Tide, two of the top teams from the 1937 college football season...
where he was voted the most valuable player of the game. He scored both of the Bears' touchdowns and rushed for 137 yards on 34 carries in their 13-0 win over Alabama in the Rose Bowl. In his three years with Cal, he gained 1,536 yards on 388 carries, which ranks him 15th on Cal's all-time rushing list. He also scored 22 touchdowns and kicked 13 PATs, and his 145 career points puts him 14th on the school's all-time charts. He was the captain of Cal's 1937 "Thunder Team" that won the school's last national football championship with a 10-0-1 record. He was a two-time first-team all-Pacific Coast Conference halfback and is in three halls of fame: the
College Football Hall of FameThe College Football Hall of Fame is a hall of fame and museum devoted to college football. Located in South Bend, Indiana, it is connected to a convention center and situated in the city's renovated downtown district, two miles south of the University of Notre Dame campus. It is slated to move...
(1981), University of California Athletic Hall of Fame (1986), and
Rose BowlThe Rose Bowl is an annual American college football bowl game, usually played on January 1 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. When New Year's Day falls on a Sunday, the game is played on Monday, January 2...
Hall of Fame (1996). He was also voted a first-team member of the Pacific-10 Conference's "All Century Team" in 2001.
Bottari was drafted by the
Brooklyn Dodgers (NFL)The Brooklyn Dodgers were an American football team that played in the National Football League from 1930 to 1943, and in 1944 as the Brooklyn Tigers. The team played its home games at Ebbets Field. In 1945, because of financial difficulties, the team was merged with the Boston Yanks...
in the fourth round in 1939 but chose not to pursue a career in the NFL
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