The Rivalry : Veterans of the War : Adams the Only Bruin Remaining From 45-42 Loss to Trojans in ’90

Wayne Cook remembers. So does J.J. Stokes.

But they were fans, watching Todd Marinovich’s 23-yard touchdown pass to Johnnie Morton that turned an apparent UCLA victory into a 45-42 loss to USC.

It was 1990. The Trojans have not beaten UCLA since.

“It was a great game to watch,” said Cook, who, like Stokes, was a redshirt freshman in 1990. “But I’m not going to lie to you and tell you it hurt as much as if you were in the game. For guys on the sidelines, it’s more like you are a spectator. You’re not out there.”

Bryan Adams was. At the start of Saturday’s game at the Rose Bowl, he will be the only Bruin who knows the feeling of losing to the Trojans.

It feels lousy.

“I’ve never had a worse feeling, especially since that was a loss that put us at 5-6 that year,” said Adams, a wide receiver. “It could have easily been turned around, but instead it became a losing season compounded with that loss. When you are 5-6, people perceive you as losers. When you are 6-5, at least you can say we were winners.”

Adams was a freshman receiver from Bakersfield who had expected to be a redshirt.

When Scott Miller was hurt early in the 1990 season, Adams moved into the receiver rotation, joining Michael Moore, Reggie Moore, Sean LaChapelle and Paul Richardson. When Miller returned, Adams stepped back, covering kickoffs and getting in on the odd play.

That was his role against USC.

He got a sense of how different the game was earlier in the week. A high school teammate, Jason Oliver, was starting at cornerback for the Trojans, and the two talked on the phone in the days before the game for the first time all season.

“We were just seeing how each other was doing and catching up,” Adams said. “We didn’t talk that much about the game. It was strange because it was the first time we had played against each other since junior high basketball.”

There was a sense that playing USC was different than playing Oklahoma or Michigan or Stanford. On the trip from the hotel to the Rose Bowl, Adams noticed veteran teammates were more tense than usual.

Reality came after putting on the pads.

“I realized this was different when we came out for warmups and saw their fans,” Adams said. “It was almost like the stadium was split in half, with red and yellow and blue and yellow on different sides. The hype about the game gives it electricity, and that’s when I began to feel it.”

He wasn’t going to play much, a few plays with no passes thrown his way. And kickoff coverage.

Little did he know how much kickoff coverage.

“I can remember the first time I went down to cover a kickoff, I felt the intensity,” he said. “It seemed we were a little faster than we normally are. I remember one time the ball was kicked out of bounds and we had three, four, five guys run all the way through. You don’t normally see that on kickoff coverage. You could see that everybody had put that game up another notch.”

The game went back and forth, USC leading, UCLA answering. The Trojans led, 21-14, at halftime, 24-14 on a field goal, and 24-21 going into the fourth quarter.

Then Tommy Maddox threw a ball over Reggie Moore’s head, Oliver intercepting and returning the ball 34 yards for a touchdown.

“I felt good for him because we had played together at Bakersfield High,” Adams said. “I felt good for him that he did it, but I didn’t want him to do it against us.

“I still leave him alone on that one. He has it on me. I never scored against USC.”

Then there was the game-ending defeat.

“The way the game went, to lose like that was heartbreaking,” Adams said. “Much like this season, we had had some troubles and lost some games, but we had turned things around toward the end. We had a chance to make a positive last note, and then for things like that to happen to us just hurt.”

A year later, the Bruins were 9-3, beating USC, 24-21, in a game in which Adams caught three passes against Oliver to help begin a three-game UCLA winning streak in the series.

This year, Adams is going to have to do some talking to persuade Coach Terry Donahue that a separated shoulder is sufficiently healed for him to play.

On Monday, Donahue said Adams wouldn’t be ready.

On Tuesday, Adams was on the practice field in a white jersey, trying to show he was ready.

It will be his last UCLA-USC game. He will be the Bruin in uniform on Saturday who knows the difference between winning and losing to USC.

“I just tell them you don’t want to lose this game because the feeling you have after you lose this game is almost like the world is coming down,” he said. “If you win this, you’re a king who can do no wrong.”

More USC-UCLA Football: If you follow either USC or UCLA football and want to review each team’s season to date, you can read features, game stories and notes that have appeared in The Times this season on TimesLink.

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