Even in Loss, Bledsoe Is Pro-ficient

I don’t know if the Raiders or Dallas Cowboys sent a scouting party to the Coliseum a day in advance, but I do know this: They should have. A few hours spent observing Drew Bledsoe of Washington State would have provided sufficient data that the best passer in college football is ready to be declared NFL-gible.

“A superstar,” to quote USC Coach Larry Smith.

A quarterback, in fact, with but one drawback.

He can’t throw lying down.

The fact that USC attacked, smacked and sacked Bledsoe five times Saturday was what accounted for Washington State’s first failure of the season as much as anything, because when this tall footballer from Walla Walla was on his feet, he hummed 358 yards’ worth of completions with all the ease of someone equipped to return someday to the Coliseum against far tougher competition.

USC, back among the supreme teams in collegiate football where it belongs, can take pride in winning, 31-21, over the 13th-ranked team in the nation and in once again turning loose Curtis (Don’t Hurt Us!) Conway, the man with more moves than Hammer. But not letting Bledsoe hurt them worse than he did, that was what really won this big game for the Trojans.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” Bledsoe said. “I’d rather throw for 20 yards and for four interceptions and win.”

He will win again, this kid will. Technically, he is a junior in school, but, hey, forget about it, the only subject he will be studying next semester is history--as in his career being history at Washington State--and he might as well sign up for a summer course in economics, because somebody is going to be paying him a high pile of money.

By passing for as much yardage as he did Saturday, Bledsoe passed Timm Rosenbach to become Washington State’s No. 1 all-time passer, behind only the Throwin’ Samoan himself, Jack Thompson. Yet it isn’t so much Bledsoe’s statistics as his style that makes him something special. He’s so, so . . . effortless, I guess you’d call it. Bledsoe has a release so relaxed, he looks as though he’s in his back yard, aiming a football at a tire swinging from a rope.

All day long, USC came at him--hard. Willie McGinest sent him backward so far, he almost wound up in the McGinest book of records. David Webb tried to use him as a surfboard. Joe Barry, four inches shorter than Bledsoe, looked as big as Joe Barry Carroll to him. There was little time for the Cougar quarterback to look for someone open--sometimes it was at the last possible instant that he whipped one, right into the palms of some well-covered receiver, chest-high.

After Smith, the winning coach, invited anyone to “ask our defense” if they wanted additional testimony as to how good Bledsoe was, the question was put to Jerald Henry, one of the cornerbacks who ran around in circles all day trying to cope with whatever Bledsoe did next.

“He’s as good as he looked on film,” Henry said, as high a praise as a worthy adversary can give. “He is a big-time quarterback.”

The Trojans had studied some film of Bledsoe’s recent performance against UCLA that would not have gotten a thumbs-up from Siskel and Ebert. It was not the quarterback’s finest hour. Against other opponents, however, Bledsoe had shown so much skill and savvy that already he is gaining ground as possibly the first quarterback--or even first player--to be picked in the NFL’s 1993 draft.

Bledsoe had never started a game at the Coliseum before Saturday, but, well, as General MacArthur or Arnold Schwarzenegger might say, he shall be back.

“What happened--the rain keep the crowd down?” Bledsoe asked afterward, good-naturedly. “I heard they were expecting 90,000.”

Sorry, son, but only 54,038 were able to take in your show. They got to see you deep inside your end zone, lofting a pass with so beautiful an arc that it broke through the gloom like a rainbow. They also got to see a gadget on third and inches that Mike Levenseller, who coaches WSU’s receivers, had saved for this very occasion, hauling it out of a bag of tricks that had helped him win Grey Cups in Canadian pro football as both a player and coach.

Bledsoe faked a sneak by ducking forward with the football after the snap. Then he tippy-toed back and lobbed it, soft as you please, to a tight end, Brett Carolan, for a 33-yard gain that left everybody on the premises with slack jaws and open mouths.

And confidence?

Well, although USC dominated from the start, Bledsoe said: “At halftime, even down by 14 points, nobody was panicking. Actually, I saw guys in our locker room with smiles on their faces.”

And afterward?

“I would say, looking around the room, the feeling isn’t so much one of dejection or sadness,” Bledsoe said. “Everybody’s just plain (synonym for annoyed ). . . . We had a chance to do what no Washington State team’s ever done--beat ‘SC and UCLA in the same season. And we didn’t.”

Larry Smith had to have a very good football team to keep that from happening. Happily for everybody at ‘SC, Larry Smith does have a very good football team.