All It Has to Be Is Trojans Playing Against the Bruins

The national championship wasn’t at stake. Not even the Rose Bowl.

No Heisman Trophy candidates were on the field. Even the Pacific 10 was out of reach.

Could this be a USC-UCLA game? Good heavens, maybe the horse wouldn’t show up.

How can you have a USC-UCLA game without O.J. Simpsons and Gary Bebans shooting for the Heisman? Shouldn’t one of these guys out there be Marcus Allen? Heck, Cotton Warburton? Racehorse Russ Saunders? How can you play “Conquest” when you’re 3-7?

You mean to tell me the networks actually opted for Stanford-California over USC-UCLA? The last time that happened Ernie Nevers was alive. Heck, so was Calvin Coolidge. Cal had a Wonder Team instead of it’s a wonder it had a team.

So, what were 85,000 people doing out there? Didn’t they know this was a meaningless game--for 25th on the AP poll or worse? For the Mobil Oil Hydrangea Bowl or the Pursuit Of Happiness Bowl?

How come they’re still having all those omelet parties in Exposition Park? The tailgate pourings in the parking lots?

What do those people think--this is Yale-Harvard? Are we going into an Ivy League mode?

Do you mean to tell me one of these teams won’t be the Green Bay Packers or Chicago Bears in a year or two? What’s going on here?

And all those students out there waving pompons, doing cartwheels, lining up card tricks--don’t they understand the situation?

When did Miami-Florida State become the big game? Whatever happened to Student Body Right and Gutty Little Bruins? Howard Jones would be rolling over in his grave. Red Sanders would need a drink.

Isn’t this where Jackie Robinson first burst on the world sports scene? And where’s Bob Waterfield, while we’re at it? Didn’t he, too, put UCLA in the big time once and for all?

Here come the Trojans in their blood-red uniforms. The Trojans look like the Thundering Herd of old, but, at 3-7, they appear more like an endangered species. The plains bison. The aurochs.

Ever think you’d live to see a USC team that had to throw the ball to beat you? Whatever happened to Tailback U?

The Bruins are more traditional. They never did scare you, just out-fought you. The Bruins were always a team that came out of the game with a torn ear, two black eyes, a bloody nose and loose teeth, but they could say “Yeah, but you should see the other guy!”

So, was this a dumb, dull, predictable game? Hell, no!

Nobody seems to have told these teams that they weren’t playing for the ages this year. Nobody got them the message this was just an exercise, a tilted pinball game. That the Bowl games were yawning. That Cal-Stanford was on the Eye this week, not them.

They went after each other like Dempsey-Firpo.

That’s one good thing about not much at stake. Not much to lose. You don’t play ‘em close to the vest. You bump and raise. Tell the dealer “Hit me again!”

These two teams threw in the highest-scoring game in the history of the series last year, 45-42, when they came into their game with seven losses and a tie between them.

They didn’t quite match that Saturday when they came in with 10 losses behind them, but 24-21 with 1 1/2 minutes to play and USC down by three and owning the ball on the UCLA 37 is not bad theater.

You throw out the form in this one. The Trojans came into the game with a quarterback who had a reputation as a scatter-arm and a season total of one touchdown pass thrown versus 11 interceptions.

But all Reggie Perry did this afternoon was throw two for touchdowns and keep the UCLA defense in a posture where the Bruins seemed to be trying to look over both shoulders at once. You would think Reggie Perry had turned into Joe Montana overnight.

UCLA came into the game with this chunky blocking back named Maury Lynell Toy, who had caught eight passes this season, none last season and only six in his previous two seasons--and he caught five in the USC game Sunday. And scored a touchdown.

A Jackie Robinson wasn’t at hand, but Kevin Williams streaked 72 yards for a critical touchdown. Bob Waterfield is long gone, but Tommy (Gun) Maddox put up some Montana statistics the first half--11 for 16, with one interception, and he kept matching USC ace-for-ace in the second half when it seemed about to dominate the game.

USC’s passer seemed more like a guy dropping notes into a bottle and tossing them overboard in the first half till, with 46 seconds to play, he threw this ever-familiar soap bubble pass, which the receiver, a man with the deliciously Trojan handle of Curtis Conway, ran under like a guy catching a satchel thrown from a fire escape.

But is this game the wave of the future? Has the football baton passed back to Northern California, where it resided for years before the ‘30s? In that era, this state’s football was all about the California Bears at Berkeley and the Stanford Whatever-They-Are-These-Days at Palo Alto. UCLA was merely a gleam in the eye in those days. We had the Stanford Vow Boys, the stubborn Stub Allison Bears. Do we turn back the clock?

Not the way to bet. Even though these two teams in L.A. have both lost to both Cal and Stanford this year, the first time that double has been pulled in years, the line of scrimmage in an USC-UCLA game is still no place for the fainthearted. They don’t need Heismans, Rose Bowls, All-Americans to make it exciting. But you’ll have to bet there’ll be plenty more when the first ones came from.