Nasty Twists on the Road to Rose Bowl

The Rose Bowl situation is still a little sticky. Anything is possible at this point. Do not rule out the possibility of Oregon vs. Northwestern.

Iowa looked like a sure thing for a while, but lost Saturday to Ohio State, leaving all those disappointed folks in Green Acres angrily shucking their corn.

Now we have no idea which Big Ten team gets to go west for Christmas and pose for snapshots at Disneyland with that glandular-case mouse.

As for the Pac-10’s representative in the Rose Bowl, nothing is certain at this point. Well, except which conference will win the Rose Bowl. That much is almost always certain.

Having watched Washington’s slaughter of Stanford here Saturday, it is obvious that the Huskies have not given up the hope of spending the first day of 1986 in Pasadena. They have not taken refuge in their locker room, crying, refusing to come out, even though there must be a strong temptation to do so whenever you lose a football game to Oregon State.

Washington was already disappointed at the way the season was going when Oregon State paid a visit a couple of weeks ago. Although the Huskies were struggling, never in a million years did they expect Oregon State to give them an argument.

Nor did the Seattle newspaper guys. One of them, before the game, wrote that Oregon State played football “the way Barney Fife played deputy.” Another one suggested the Northwest would run out of logs before the Huskies ever lost to those silly little Beavers.

Well, even a man who plays for Oregon State has pride. The Beavers beat Washington, 21-20, whereupon Tom Emmons, an offensive tackle, went up to a guy carrying a steno pad.

“Are you a Seattle reporter?” Emmons asked.

“Yeah,” Steno Pad said.

“How stupid do you feel?” Emmons asked.

Maybe the Beavers were not ready to go to the Rose Bowl yet--hell still had not frozen over--but they were not immune to every form of insult. When word of all those Seattle guys’ wisecracks got back to Oregon State before the Washington game, defensive star Lavance Northington said he could only take so much. “They were attacking our manhood,” he said.

The loss to Oregon State was a devastating one to Washington. Quarterback Hugh Millen occupied a stool after that game and said: “I can’t believe I’m sitting here talking about losing to Oregon State .”

But it happens. Even Barney Fife solved a crime once.

The question that remained was whether Washington would ever recover. It was not too late. There were still a number of big games to be played. Coach Don James had to convince his squad that being defeated by Oregon State did not necessarily mean that they should pour gasoline on their uniforms and strike a match.

And then along came Stanford. Just what the Pac-10 doctor ordered. Stanford could have put helmets on its marching band Saturday and gotten a better performance than it did from its football team.

Washington won, 34-0. It was the first time in 89 games Stanford had been shut out. It was the first time in Coach Jack Elway’s 10-year collegiate career one of his teams had been shut out. The game could have gone on for six quarters and Stanford still would have been shut out.

“Zero points means total ineptness on offense,” Elway said afterward. Let that be the thought for the day.

John Paye, the quarterback who had piled up points and passing yardage week after week, passed for a total of 96 yards in this game. He threw four interceptions, too. “I was inept,” he said.

Somehow, you get the idea Elway walked into the locker room after the game and wrote the word “INEPT” on a blackboard.

Washington, meanwhile, looked extremely ept. Rick Fenney, 242 pounds of rock ‘em, sock ‘em running back, was an absolute locomotive until he got hurt late in the game. And Millen was more than adequate at quarterback. No pro scouts were drooling, but he did look pretty good.

Millen said the Washington players went positively bonkers in the locker room before the game, pounding the walls and chanting and making all sorts of prehistoric grunts. Evidently, they felt the only way to overcome a loss to Oregon State was to make the next opponent aware that you are borderline insane.

“Yeah, that one made us a little crazy,” Millen said Saturday, laughing.

And so, the foaming-at-the-mouth Huskies are still in the hunt for a Rose Bowl bid. They are eager to get past the good teams such as UCLA and USC so they can get at the easier teams such as Ohio State and Iowa and Illinois and Michigan.

Nobody really believes those Big Ten teams are that bad, by the way.

But maybe if somebody insults their manhood enough, those men from the Big Ten will come to the Rose Bowl and finally play a decent game.