The 1931 college football season saw the USC Trojans win the Knute Rockne Memorial Trophy as national champion under the Dickinson system. Rockne, who had coached Notre Dame to a championship in 1930, had been killed in a plane crash on March 31, 1931. For the first time, the champion under the Dickinson system also played in a postseason game. The Rose Bowl, promoted as an unofficial championship matchup between the best teams of East and West, matched USC and Tulane, #1 and #2 in the Dickinson ratings. USC won, 21-12. Also in 1931 Parke Davis through research, and recognized by the NCAA, declared that Purdue and Pittsburgh were National Champions. Major conferences that existed in 1931 were the Western Conference (today's Big Ten), the Pacific Coast Conference (now the Pac-10), the Big S