IT WAS ONE-SIDED : Advantage to Rodney Peete in His Showdown With Jamelle Holieway

It was one of the season’s first matchups of nationally ranked college football players--the players who are under consideration for the major year-end trophies and prizes.

And before halftime here Saturday:

--The USC defense dropped Oklahoma quarterback Jamelle Holieway toward the bottom of the list.

--USC quarterback Rodney Peete moved toward the top with an impressive display of runs and passes that eventually made the Trojans an easy 23-7 winner in front of a Coliseum crowd of 86,124.

“(Peete’s) ability to come up with the big third down plays took us out of the game,” Oklahoma’s Barry Switzer, the nation’s winningest college coach, said afterward.

And that was about the size of it. For example, when the game was still on the line in the first quarter--after Holieway had moved the Sooners a bit and after USC had lost one opportunity on a dropped pass--it was Peete’s 22-yard up-the-middle scramble, on third and 20, that was the beginning of the end for Oklahoma.

In USC’s decisive 20-0 first half, Peete never threw a bad pass, except, possibly, for the one that only hit a receiver in one hand. The other misses were either drops or throwaways.

Peete has considerable competition this season, to be sure, for the Heisman and other trophies--most conspicuously from UCLA quarterback Troy Aikman.

“This is a season when I look for the race to go down to the last two weeks,” said former All-American Tom Harmon, the Western section chairman of the Heisman Trophy committee. “Six or seven guys have a shot at it.”

The six or seven come in all kinds from expert passers (Aikman) to highly mobile passer-runners (Peete).

“There’s an (NFL) trend to quarterbacks who have the qualities Peete has,” said former Illinois Coach Mike White, who helps Mike Giddings evaluate football talent for Pro Scout Inc.

“The key to quarterbacking today is moving the ball down the field.”

Clearly, Saturday, that was the key to beating Oklahoma.

The Oklahoma quarterback, Holieway, demonstrated again that as a passer, he is much better than advertised.

From the start of the game, the Sooner senior from Carson was constrained more by the limitations of the wishbone offense than by his own abilities, which are considerable.

Thus Holieway’s accurate long passes in the third quarter led to the Sooners’ only points. And although the prime reason for the Oklahoma touchdown may have been the type of defense that USC was playing at the time--a run defense, strictly, with nine or 10 Trojans watching Oklahoma’s three running backs--the point is that Holieway got the ball out there properly.

As a pro prospect, Holieway has one problem that Peete doesn’t, height. He is 5-8 or 5-9 to Peete’s 6-2.

“If you can’t see ‘em, you can’t hit ‘em,” said Detroit Lions scout Jerry Neri, who, however, doesn’t completely rule Holieway out of the NFL.

“Eddie LeBaron was the same size,” he said, “and Eddie played pro ball for many years.”

Holieway has one thing going for him as he contemplates his professional future. “He’s a great athlete,” said Tampa Bay Buccaneers scout James Harris.

And, said White, “The NFL is always interested in athletes.”

The Trojans are back.

They’re all the way back to where John Robinson left them so long ago.

In the third week of the new coach’s second season here, it is clear now that Larry Smith has restored order at USC.

This was the main lesson of the big win Saturday over a national power.

Across town, UCLA probably has the better players--it seemed so, anyway, in the Nebraska game--but USC is catching up fast.

Indeed, Miami, UCLA and USC will now be considered the top three of college football, no doubt, until, somewhere down the road, one of them loses.

Smith’s great achievement so far has been the restructuring of the USC defense. The Trojans against Oklahoma showed unusual strength deep and pretty good strength up front.

But they may have even more talent offensively. At fullback, Leroy Holt was a load. The tailback, Aaron Emanuel, as he sprinted forward, consistently made professional decisions on the holes. His replacement, when Emanuel went down with an injury, was another effective but smaller guy with even more burst, Ricky Ervins.

And in USC’s pass offense, Smith attacked with a number of professional receivers, Erik Affholter and John Jackson among them.

To give all this talent its best possible chance, Smith changed into a three-wide-receiver offense in the third quarter, and Oklahoma didn’t have much defense for that, particularly when Affholter lined up inside one of the other wide receivers. In that scheme, Affholter, a never-drop catcher, was repeatedly open.

What such a team needs is, of course, a trigger. And Peete was the trigger.